July 27th.—As we did not leave Baltimore until half-past nine, we were enabled to see much of it. Its monuments to Washington, and to the heroes of the last war, are handsome, and the fountain with its cool canopy of shadowy elms, pretty; its churches and public buildings very good, but as you are so well acquainted with it, I will not trouble you with any details. We entered the rail-road car at half-past nine, and reached New York at eleven that night, a distance of two hundred miles, for which we paid eight dollars each. Several long bridges carried us over Bush creek, Gunpowder river, and the noble Susquehanna. Our western friends, who had been boasting of their great rivers, seemed surprised at the little use we made of them in travelling. ‘It seems,’ said our fair Missouri lady, ‘rivers here are of no consequence—indeed, are in the way, as you make bridges and drive over them.’
At one o’clock we reached Wilmington, the capitol of Delaware. This State was a Swedish settlement, named by Gustavus Adolphus, Nova Suecia, since which time, Dutch, English and Americans, have successively owned it.
We dined at Wilmington, and then hastening on, passed through Chester, and a rich level country, to the beautiful city of Philadelphia. Leaving our railroad at the depot, we drove through the whole length of the city, where, at five o’clock, we entered the cars again, turned our faces towards New York, which we reached, as I said, at eleven o’clock, the road being along the Delaware, and through some rich farms, with elegant mansions and huge Pennsylvania barns; through Bristol and Trenton, in New Jersey, when darkness spread over the land and we saw no more. And now farewell to the
“Land of the west! green forest land.”
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Sunday schools have been maintained; and in pursuance of my recommendation, the cell of each prisoner is always supplied with a volume of the School District Library. The measure was followed by a gratifying improvement in the conduct of the prisoners. Many wearisome hours of solitary time are beguiled,; resolutions of repentance and reformation are formed, and the minds of the unhappy convicts, accustomed to the contemplation of virtue, and expanded by knowledge, are gradually prepared to resist the temptations which await them on their return to society.—Gov. Seward’s Message, Jan. 1841.
[2] Chapin’s Gazateer.
[3] Tanner.