Dinner is over—­the events of the day have been discussed ’mid fragrant clouds, and we are asleep in the capital of the State of New York.

We were obliged to be astir early in the morning, so as to be in time for the railway; consequently, our lionizing of the city consisted chiefly in smoking a cigar at the front-door.  The town is prettily situated on the banks of the Hudson, and at its confluence with the Erie canal.  It is one of the few towns in the Republic which enjoys a Royalist name, having been called after the Duke of York and Albany, and is a very thriving place, with a steadily increasing population, already amounting to sixty thousand; and some idea of its prosperity may be formed from the fact of its receiving, by the Erie canal, annually, goods to the value of near six millions sterling.  Some years ago it was scourged by an awful fire; but it has risen, like a phoenix, from its ashes, and profited materially by the chastisement.  The chief objection I had to the town was the paving of the streets, which was abominable, and full of holes, any of them large enough to bury a hippopotamus, and threatening dislocation of some joint at every step; thus clearly proving that the contract for the paving was in the hands of the surgeons.  On similar grounds, it has often occurred to me that the proprietors of the London cabs must be chiefly hatters.

Our descent from the hotel to the railway station was as lively as that of a parched pea on a red-hot frying-pan, but it was effected without any injury requiring the assistance of the paving-surgeons, and by the time our luggage was ticketed the train had arrived:  some tumbled out, others tumbled in; the kettle hissed, and off we went, the first few hundred yards of our journey being along the street.  Not being accustomed to see a train going in full cry through the streets, I expected every minute to hear a dying squeak, as some of the little urchins came out, jumping and playing close to the cars; but they seem to be protected by a kind of instinct; and I believe it would be as easy to drive a train over a cock-sparrow as over a Yankee boy.  At last we emerged from the town, and went steaming away merrily over the country.  Our companions inside were a motley group of all classes.  By good fortune, we found a spare seat on which to put our cloaks, &c., which was a luxury rarely enjoyed in my future travels, being generally obliged to carry them on my knee, as the American cars are usually so full that there is seldom a vacant place on which to lay them.

Our route lay partly along the line of the Mohawk, on the banks of which is situated the lovely village of Rockton, or Little Falls, where the gushing stream is compressed between two beautifully wooded cliffs, affording a water-power which has been turned to good account by the establishment of mills.  At this point the Erie canal is cut for two miles through the solid rock, and its unruffled waters, contrasting