There are every now and then, especially on the southern bank, large plots, which, at a distance, look exactly like Turkish cemeteries.  On nearing them, you find that the old destroyer, Time, has expended all the soil sufficiently to allow the bare rock to peep through, and the disconsolate forest has retired in consequence, leaving only the funeral cypress to give silent expression to its affliction.  Hark! what sound is that?  Dinner!  A look at the company was not as appetissant as a glass of bitters, but a peep at the tout-ensemble was fatal; so, patience to the journey’s end.  Accordingly, I consoled myself with a cigar and the surrounding scenery; no hard task either, with two good friends to help you.  On we went, passing little villages busy as bees, and some looking as fresh as if they had been built over-night.  At last, a little before dusk, Albany hove in sight.  As we neared the wharf, it became alive with Paddy cabmen and porters of every age:  the former, brandishing their whips, made such a rush on board when we got within jumping distance, that one would have thought they had come to storm the vessel.  We took it coolly, allowing the rush of passengers to land first; and then, having engaged two “broths of boys” with hackney coaches, we drove up to the Congress Hall Hotel, where, thanks to our young American cicerone, we were very soon comfortably lodged, with a jolly good dinner before us.  I may as well explain why it was thanks to our friend that we were comfortably lodged.

’Throughout the whole length and breadth of the Republic, the people are gregarious, and go everywhere in flocks; consequently, on the arrival of railway train or steamer, ’buses from the various hotels are always in waiting, and speedily filled.  No sooner does the ’bus pull up, than a rush is made by each one to the book lying on the counter, that he may inscribe his name as soon as possible, and secure a bedroom.  The duty of allotting the apartments generally devolves upon the head clerk, or chief assistant; but as, from the locomotive propensities of the population, he has a very extensive acquaintance, and knows not how soon some of them may be arriving, he billets the unknown in the most out-of-the-way rooms; for the run upon all the decent hotels is so great, that courtesy is scarce needed to insure custom.  Not that they are uncivil; but the confusion caused by an arrival is so great, and the mass of travellers are so indifferent to the comfort or the attention which one meets with in a decent hotel in this country, that, acting from habit, they begin by roosting their guests, like crows, at the top of the tree.

To obviate this inconvenience, I would suggest, for the benefit of future travellers, the plan I found on many occasions so successful myself, in my subsequent journeys; which is, whenever you are comfortably lodged in any hotel, to take a letter from the proprietor to the next you wish to stop at.  They give it you most readily, and on many occasions I found the advantage of it.  They all know one another; and in this way you might travel all through the Union.