The 26th of April, the day appointed for my departure, arrived only
too speedily. To part is the unavoidable fate of the traveller; but
sometimes we part gladly, sometimes with regret. I need not write
many pages to describe my feelings at the parting in Hamburgh. I
was leaving behind me my last relations, my last friends. Now I was
going into the wide world, and among strangers.

At eight o'clock in the morning I left Altona, and proceeded by
railway to Kiel.

I noticed with pleasure that on this railway even the third-class
carriages were securely covered in, and furnished with glass
windows. In fact, they only differed from those of the first and
second class in being painted a different colour, and having the
seats uncushioned.

The whole distance of seventy miles was passed in three hours; a
rapid journey, but agreeable merely by its rapidity, for the whole
neighbourhood presents only widely-extended plains, turf-bogs and
moorlands, sandy places and heaths, interspersed with a little
meadow or arable land. From the nature of the soil, the water in
the ditches and fields looked black as ink.

Near Binneburg we notice a few stunted plantations of trees. From
Eisholm a branch-line leads to Gluckstadt, and another from
Neumunster, a large place with important cloth-factories, to
Rendsburg.

From here there is nothing to be seen but a convent, in which many
Dukes of Holstein lie buried, and several unimportant lakes; for