of the honour due to him by his country, I should feel that I had culpably omitted the payment of a loyal due to Nature. Or had I never seen Trenton Falls, and should persist in traversing the great thoroughfare to the West, without turning off at Utica to honour Nature by a visit to this her magnificent example of what she can do by felicitous physical (as she does in genius by felicitous moral) combination of her elements, I should, in the same way, feel guilty of a neglect of deference which was more due as my own spirit was finer and more appreciative.

Now, varlets that we are! (and I will "make a clean breast" for the firm, while I am about it) have "we" not, Morris and Willis, passed months together at your eyrie of Undercliffeighteen miles only from Lake Mahopac, the head waters of the Croton-and, with time and two gray horses on our hands, never once driven over to see the beautiful spot, which like the unseen principle of life, keeps unsuspended watch over the vital circulation of our city's arteries, and, to its myriad healthful veins, sends the ever prompt and salutary fluid? The Spirit of Beauty and the Spirit of Utility were alike neglected in this unperformed pilgrimage.

I am ashamed additionally to record, that, almost from our office door, several times a day, runs a rail train to within four miles of Lake Mahopac, and vehicles ply regularly over this remainder of the way. The whole distance, about fifty-four miles, is done usually in three hours, and the route runs most of its course, upon the banks of the Croton and its tributaries -indifferent scenery, but an amusing ride, with its busy sprinkle of cits let off, right and left, to their suburban retreats, at every blow of the whistle. The New Haven trains, I should mention, run fifteen miles on the Harlem track, turning off eastward to Connecticut at Williams Bridge.

I left town at five, and reached Lake Mahopac a little after dark. The driver said there were two public houses, and took me to the larger. The boarders were doing Polka to a piano, and, as the coach drove up, a gentleman came forward to the gate, whom, taking to be the landlord, I applied to for quarters. I must do our country's manners the justice to record the politeness of this gentleman. He might reasonably have turned his shoulder at being mistaken for a country landlord, but he, instead, courteously offered to accompany

me to the landlady, and went before me, introducing me and stating my wish to a dame in the back parlor. I saw, by the better light of the interior, that he was a young man very fashionably dressed, and I thanked him with a mental admission that I had never, in any country, met an instance of more natural and true gentle breeding.

Such things are pleasant to mention, and let me record another instance of my countrymen's politeness. I stood upon the shore of the Lake the next morning after breakfast, watching a beautiful little yacht that was running with full sail before the wind, when she suddenly put about and made for shore. One of the three or four gentlemen who were in her landed, and, remarking that they had observed from the boat that I was alone, offered me a sail upon the Lake. As I was a stranger to all the gentlemen, I need not say that it was a spontaneous courtesy that would do credit to the manners of any country in the world.

To go back to my arrival-there was not a room to be had at the principal lodging-house, and I went on to the other, where the crowd on the stoop looked equally unpromising. One of those sharp little twelve-year-old Yankee boys, who, in New England, very commonly do all the bar-tending and host-playing of public houses, went up stairs with me on a voyage of discovery; and, in a corner under the eaves, where a pigeon might be appropriately lodged, we found a spot at last, that had neither a lady's petticoat hanging against the wall, nor a gentleman's tooth-brush playing sentry on the washstand. With the sloping roof resting on the tops of my toes, here slept I, and, by the light from a window down at the floor, and as large perhaps as your spacious shirt-bosom, my dear General, write I to you now. Both of these public houses (to dismiss with one remark the matter of accommodations) are in the two-pronged-iron-fork stage of civilized progress, and this tardy lag behind the times is a little surprising in a place so beautiful and accessible, and where a good hotel would so certainly "draw."

In the course of the forenoon, our friend Gray, who is lodging in a private house hard by, drove me partly around the Lake, and to the summit of one of the hills, from which we could get a view over the landscape. The country around looks hard and Connecticut-esque, but the Mahopac is a most lovely sheet of water, with three wooded islands in its bosom,

F

and the outline of the horizon is free and bold. The circumference of the Lake is about nine miles, and its shape offers charming facilities for boating and sailing. There are four other lakes visible from the summit of one of the hills; and it is a very remarkable geological fact, by-the-way, that, only a few rods from Lake Mahopac is another lake, a mile long and about half a mile wide, the surface of which is a hundred and fifty feet lower than Lake Mahopac! These different sheets of water can all easily be made tributary to the Croton, so that Providence seems to have provided means to water even another London, should Manhattan wax to that size and necessity. The height of these natural reservoirs above the Hudson, I understand, is fifteen hundred feet.

The courteous commodore of the yacht Fanny, whose kind invitation to a cruise I most gladly accepted, landed me on one of the islands, and another gentleman and I explored it, while the rest of the party took a swim. It seemed to be about six or eight acres, heavily covered with wood, and shaped like the top of a volcanic mountain, with a deep dell or crater in the centre. A prettier place for a fancy residence (with stables and farm-house on the main land) could hardly be imagined. My friend had sailed his yacht up the Hudson to Peekskill, and thence, fifteen miles, she had been brought across upon wheels and launched for life upon the loftier waters of the Mahopac. He brings his family here every year, and spends his leisure charmingly, in cruising about among the islands, fishing and swimming. I noticed a considerable number of small row-boats, pulled about in all directions by young girls in sun-bonnets, and this fine exercise seems to be the amusement of the place, and one from which no danger whatever is apprehended. The boats were of a shape impossible to upset, and it struck me as a diversion for children most pleasant and reasonable.

You are sitting in your slippers, "minding the Doctor," only eighteen miles from this my present writing, dear Morris, and I have been to the stables to look up a conveyance by which to get where you are playing the invalid. The horses are "all out haying," however, and the easiest way I find to convey my sympathies to you bodily, is to return by railway to New York and steam it up the Hudson -a hundred miles round, easier than eighteen across. As this place becomes more frequented, there will, of course,

be

NIGHT'S SLEEP IN THE CARS.

67

a plying of stages to Peekskill, and the route to the city will be a little varied.

I am very glad to see the end of my letter, for I write upon a washstand in a triangular garret, and it will be a strong case of isolation, if the smell of hot shingles from without, and warm feathers within, have not given a tincture to my style. Good-bye to you across the mountains, my dear invalid, if your magnetism can feel my neigborhood thus far. Yours, &c.

LETTER FROM ERIE RAILROAD.

A Thirty-six Hours' Trip-Night's Sleep in the Cars-Waking up first at the end of Two hundred miles- Wonders of Locomotion - Country Tavern at Sunrise-Fromiscuous Bed-room-Dressing in the Entry— Scenery in framed Panels-Drive between Susquehannah and Arched Viaduct-Entrance to the Storucco, and what it is likeRainbow Bridge from Cloud to Cloud-Chasm of Rent-Open Mountain-Cascade off Duty-Drive to Great Bend-Much seen in little Time, etc., etc.

As tired of town and toil as nerves and powers of attention could well be, dear Morris, I flung myself (as usual of late) into the refreshing arms of the Erie Railroad, the evening after getting our last paper to press. With the brief rocking and fanning of the twenty miles' boating to Piermont, I became quite ready for sleep in those two long iron arms (which, iron though they are, do the soothing of arms softer and shorter), and I do not think I was conscious of a thought till within twenty miles of the Susquehannah. The cars that leave Piermont at evening (to explain the soundness of my repose) are fitted with reclining couches, ingeniously arranged for sleep in two attitudes, and as most men leave the city for this train pretty well tired, most passengers sleep, from the Hudson to the Susquehannah, very soundly. The conductor, if you are not practised traveller enough to have anticipated him, politely suggests that you should pin your ticket on your sleeve, or slip it under the band of your hat, so that he need not wake you for a rummage into your pocket, when compelled, as usual after every stopping-place, to reconnoitre for new comers.

"Here we leave the Delaware," said a voice as the cars came to a stop, and, thus awoke from my first sleep, I stepped out to air my eyelids, and get a breath unpulverized with cinders. It was dawn, and the falling garment of Night was holding on by one button-a single brilliant star in the east. All of earth that I could see was thickly wooded, producing the impression (so deliciously refreshing after a surfeit of town)--of a new world in its virgin covering of leaves. So far from the city, and how had I got here so unconsciously! I looked at my conveyance to realize it :-two hundred miles, in a long row of houses, and without breaking my nap! That this ponderous train of cars had borne me hither so softly and so swiftly! I shall not stop wondering at railway travelling, I think, till we are

"Borne, like Loretto's chapel, thro' the air."

My errand on this excursion was to see the chasm of the Storucco a rocky pass one hundred and eighty feet deep, over which the railway passes, on a bridge of a single archand the village of Lanesboro', two miles beyond, was of course my stopping-place. I had persuaded our accomplished friend, Miss and the Doctor, to accompany me; and the three of us were deposited on the stoop of a country tavern at the calamitous in-door hour of five in the morning. You image to yourself at once, of course, the reluctant manners of the unshaved bar-keeper, and the atmosphere of the just-opened and unswept bar-room! Where the lady was shown to I did not enquire; but the Doctor and I were ushered into a small bed-room, where the oxygen had been for some hours entirely exhausted, and where, on one of the two beds, lay asleep one of our promiscuous gender. "Don't mind him," said the bar-keeper, as we backed out from the intrusion, “it's only a friend of mine!"--but even with this expressive encouragement, and a glance at the sleeper's boots, which gave us a conventional confirmation that he was a man not to be "minded," we persisted in leaving the sleeper to his privacy. Our accommodator then offered to "bring us the fixin's" for a toilet in the entry, which we at once accepted, dressing with a murderous look-out upon the slaughter of the chickens for our breakfast. I daguerreotype these details, and similar ones, of things and manners as they are, foreseeing that railroads will soon irrigate the country with refinements, in contrast with which these primitive sketches may be curious.