Shortly afterwards I went ashore, and, armed with an itinerary, kindly drawn up for me by Michel Chevalier, in which he had mentioned all he advised my seeing, both as to men and things, during the short time at my disposal, I started on a hasty tour through that splendid country.  That first glimpse of America fulfilled all my expectations, and delighted me.  A young country it was in very deed.  Nature itself, to my European eyes, had a pureness of atmosphere, a richness of vegetation, a freshness, a general air of youth, unknown in our older countries.  Man too, in his gait, in his independence of mind, and his boldness of enterprise, betrayed an exuberant vigour of which our populations, enervated by disappointing experiences, and crushed by routine as they are, have grown incapable.

As I desired to get from Norfolk in Virginia to Washington, I started by the Roanoke Railway, on the first day of my trip, and thus crossed an immense marsh, the “Dismal Swamp.”  The rails we ran on being laid open-work fashion on huge piles fifteen feet above the marsh, the whole road rocked under the weight of the engine, so much as to disturb the waters of the swamp and startle the numberless snakes and turtles inhabiting it.  It was a most novel sensation.  Further on, betwixt Baltimore and Philadelphia, the train having to cross an arm of the sea, steamed on full pace; the engine, uncoupling itself, ran ahead on to a siding, while our train was carried by its own impetus on to the upper deck of a steam ferry-boat, moored at the end of the line.  It stopped exactly at the right spot, and while the boat crossed the arm of the sea, we went below and dined at a splendid buffet on the lower deck, waited on by the prettiest of barmaids.

Further on yet, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in that rich Allegheny country where the coal-beds lie on the surface, and coal costs five francs a ton, and whence petroleum oil was soon to gush forth, the travelling was done by canal in the flat country, and by funicular railways in the mountains, by means of boats built in sections which hooked together on the water, and were taken apart when there was a question of climbing up inclined planes.  All public works and means of communication were full of daring things like these, while in Europe (I speak of the year 1838) we were still at our first timorous essays at railway travelling.

I travelled through Virginia, passing by all those spots where four and twenty years later I was to watch the bloodiest battles of the War of Secession, that first and awful convulsion of the great Republic’s manhood.  Reaching Washington, I was most courteously received by President Van Buren.  How often since then I have been back at the White House, under Presidents Tyler, Buchanan, and Lincoln!  How many a curious scene I have witnessed there, under the rule of the last-named President, rich as it was in dramatic incident!  During that first stay of mine at Washington I made