Our first land travelling, in which we had to take our chance with the world in general, was across the State of New York. My account of what we saw may seem excessively minute in some of its details; but this style of particularity is not adopted without reasons. While writing my journal, I always endeavoured to bear in mind the rapidity with which civilization advances in America, and the desirableness of recording things precisely in their present state, in order to have materials for comparison some few years hence, when travelling may probably be as unlike what it is now, as a journey from London to Liverpool by the new railroad differs from the same enterprise as undertaken a century and a half ago.

To avoid some of the fatigues and liabilities of common travelling, certain of our shipmates and their friends., and ourselves had made up a party to traverse the State of New York in an “exclusive extra;” a stage hired, with the driver, for our own use, to proceed at our own time.