A considerable schooner trade is carried on by the merchants of Baltimore with South America.  The schooners of this port are celebrated for their beauty, and are much superior to those of any other port on the Continent.  They are sharp built, somewhat resembling the small Greek craft one sees in the Mediterranean.  A rail-road is being constructed from this place to the Ohio river, a distance of upwards of three hundred miles, and about fourteen miles of the road is already completed, as is also a viaduct.  If the enterprising inhabitants of Baltimore be able to finish this undertaking, it must necessarily throw a very large amount of wealth into their hands, to the prejudice of Philadelphia and New York.  But the expense will be enormous.

I left Baltimore for Philadelphia in one of those splendid and spacious steam-boats peculiar to this country.  We paddled up the Chesapeak bay until we came to Elk river—­the scenery at both sides is charming.  A little distance up this river commences the “Chesapeak and Delaware canal,” which passes through the old state of Delaware, and unites the waters of the two bays.  Here we were handed into a barge, or what we in common parlance would term a large canal boat; but the Americans are the fondest people in the universe of big names, and ransack the Dictionary for the most pompous appellations with which to designate their works or productions.  The universal fondness for European titles that obtains here, is also remarkable.  The president, is “his excellency,”—­“congressmen,” are “honorables,”—­and every petty merchant, or “dry-goods store-keeper,” is, at least, an esquire.  Their newspapers contain many specimens of this love of monarchical distinctions—­such as, “wants a situation, as store-keeper (shopman), a gentleman, &c.”  “Two gentlemen were convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for horse-stealing, &c.”  These two items I read myself in the papers of the western country, and the latter was commented on by a Philadelphia journal.  You may frequently see “Miss Amanda,” without shoes or stockings—­certainly for convenience or economy, not from necessity, and generally in Dutch houses—­and “that ere young lady” scouring the pails!  An accident lately occurred in one of the factories in New England, and the local paper stated, that “one young lady was seriously injured,”—­this young lady was a spinner.  Observe, I by no means object to the indiscriminate use of the terms gentleman and lady, but merely state the fact.  On the contrary, so far am I from finding fault with the practice, that I think it quite fair; when any portion of republicans make use of terms which properly belong to a monarchy, that all classes should do the same, it being unquestionably their right.  It does not follow, because a man may be introduced as an American gentleman, that he may not be simply a mechanic.