superior in every way to ours. Great trust is shown in the honesty of
the passengers, there being no one to receive payment at the door, but a
notice within directs the money to be paid to the driver, which is done
through a hole in the roof, and he presents his fingers to receive it,
without apparently knowing how many passengers have entered. We
frequently meet woolly-headed negroes in our walks, and they seem to
form a large proportion of the servants, both male and female, and of
porters and the like. We are disappointed in the fruit. The peaches are
cheap, and in great quantities, but they are very inferior to ours in
flavour, and the melons are also tasteless. The water-melons are cut in
long slices and sold in the streets, and the people eat them as they
walk along. The great luxury of the place is ice, which travels about
the streets in carts, the blocks being three or four feet thick, and a
glass of iced water is the first thing placed on the table at each meal.
The cookery at this hotel is French, and first rate. We have had a few
dishes that are new to us. The corn-bread and whaffles are cakes made
principally of Indian-corn; and the Okra-vegetable, which was to us new,
is cut into slices to flavour soup. Lima beans are very good; we have
also had yams, and yesterday tasted the Cincinnati champagne, which we
thought very poor stuff.

_Fillmore House, Newport, Rhode Island, September 13th._--We left New
York on Thursday afternoon, and embarked in a Brobdingnagian steamboat,
which it would not be very easy to describe. The cabin is on the upper
deck, so that at either end you can walk out on to the stern or bow of
the vessel; it is about eleven feet high, and most splendidly fitted up
and lighted at night with four ormolu lustres, each having eight large
globe lights. We paced the length of the cabin and made it 115 paces, so
that walking nine times up and down made a nice walk of a mile. The
engine of the steamboat in America rises far above the deck in the