cuse, Salina with its salt vats, Onondaga Lake, the town of Liverpool, with the thickly wooded country between it and Oneida Lake in the extreme distance, scarcely compensate for the risk of ascending it in a heavy coach.

mass.

Our progress was much delayed by the delivery of the mail bag at every small hamlet on the road. The letters in America, instead of being put into separate bags for each town as in England, are carried in one huge leather case, which the postmaster is allowed to detain ten minutes, so that he may pick his letters out of the general The coachman (there being no guard) drives up to the office, sometimes a small tavern, and throws the bag, about the size of a flour sack, upon the hard pavement, or muddy road, as most convenient; it is then trailed. along into the house, and, being unlocked, the lower end is elevated, and out tumble all the letters, newspapers, and pamphlets, in a heap upon the floor. At the little village of Lenox, I had the curiosity to look into the bar for the purpose of seeing the mode of sorting letters, and witnessed a scene which could never answer in any other country. The sorters consisted of an old grey-headed man, at least seventy-five years of age, an old woman, with "spectacles on nose," the old gentleman's equal in point of years, and a great, fat, ruddy-faced damsel of twenty-five, backed by half a dozen dirty little barefooted urchins, who were all down upon their knees on the floor, overhauling the huge pile before them, flinging those letters which were for their office into a distant corner of the room, amongst sundry wet mops, brushes, molasses barrels, &c.; and those which were for other towns on our route were again bagged in the same gentle style, part having to undergo the same process every fifth mile of our day's journey, excepting at the office at Onondaga Hill,

S

where the postmaster, being an attorney at law, managed to detain us only two minutes. Many of these offices, costing the Government an annual sum of 200 or 300 dollars for the postmaster's salary, do not receive half that amount in letters. One man assured me that sometimes his month's receipts did not exceed six dollars. No revenue being required from the post-office establishment, the offices in large towns furnish funds for extending the mail line of communication. The surplus funds of that at New York are enormous; but, for the last three years, the expenditure upon the mails has much exceeded the receipts throughout the States. In 1790, there were only seventy-five post-offices; at this time, there are 9000, and 115,000 miles of mail communication; and the postage on letters from Boston to Baltimore, a distance little under 400 miles, is only 9d. sterling.

At Marcellus the coach stopped at an inn, of which the landlord seemed quite an original. He was sitting in the bar, without his coat and neckcloth, reading a newspaper, and his feet stretched half across the top of the table, round which several of his guests were enjoying "a drink" and a mouthful of the Virginia weed. Hearing one of the passengers address him by the title of "Doctor," I observed "he was an elegant specimen of a medical man." "Ah, but," said my fellow-traveller, "he's one of the smartest physicians in the State, I'll assure you:" certainly not a literal description, according to the English acceptation of the word; for he was one of the shabbiest-looking men I ever cast eyes on. At sunset, we reached the beautiful little village of Skaneateles, situated at the head of a romantic lake, sixteen miles long and nearly two wide, of the same name. While delayed here for some time to "shift horses," and for the mail to undergo another exa

mination, the passengers stood on the margin of the lake, admiring its clear and unruffled surface, save here and there where a slight ripple was caused by the slow movement of one or two small scullers, as they changed their fishing berth for some spot which would appear more favourable for their diversion. Gardens and cultivated fields extended to the water's edge, and numerous neat white houses scattered about upon the range of low hills ornamented either bank. While gazing on its beauties, a thunder-storm suddenly burst over us, with a heavy squall of wind; and ere we could regain the coach the whole scene was changed. The lake was now perfectly black, and its disturbed surface with a small and troubled ripple, occasioned by the violent gust, formed a strong and somewhat unpleasing contrast to its late placid and mild appearance.

At half-past eight we arrived at the American hotel in Auburn, rejoiced that the fatigues of the day were over, having had scarcely 200 yards of level ground during the last twenty miles. We had passed, too, through the strangest medley of named towns imaginable. It appeared almost as if the founders had collected them from all quarters of the globe indifferently, discarding many of the finesounding, significant, old Indian names, and substituting some gleaned from ancient Greece or Italy, interspersed with one from Cockney land, or perhaps a genuine Yankeeism. The following is the correct order in which we saw the towns during our journey of this day. Utica, New Hartford, Manchester, Canestota, Quality Hill, Chitteningo, Manlius, Jamesville, Onondaga, Syracuse, Liverpool, Marcellus, Skaneateles, Auburn.

$ 2

The most pernicious infection, next the plague, is the smell of the jail, where prisoners have been long and close kept.

BACON.

HEARING that the board of health had issued an order that no visitors should be admitted into the prison until the cholera had subsided, a precaution taken in consequence of its having broken out in the Sing-Sing prison on the Hudson, we much feared that we should be disappointed in not attaining the object for which we had visited Auburn; fortunately, however, Mr. B. had introductory letters to Dr. Richards, president of the Theological Seminary, through whose interest we obtained an order for admittance at mid-day on the 7th of August.

The prison is situated on the outskirts of the village, surrounded by a wall 2000 feet in extent, varying in height from 20 to 35 feet, according to the situation of the shops in which the convicts are employed. The cells

where they are confined during the night have a singular appearance (something like a large pigeon box, or honeycomb), being in five stories, with galleries, and the windows in an outer wall at the distance of five or six feet from them, so that no convict can attempt effecting his escape through their medium. It is, in fact, a house within a house. Each prisoner has a separate cell 7 feet in length, 7 in height, by 3 in width, with a small shelf for holding his bible, and a canvass cot, which, in the day time, is reared up against the wall, and, when lowered down at night, rests upon a small ledge, and covers the whole extent of the cell. A strong grated door admits a free circulation of air, and the works of the lock are so contrived as to be two feet from the door, and entirely out of a convict's reach, if he even succeeded in breaking one of the iron bars so as to admit a passage for his arm. A keeper always patrolling the galleries during the night with cloth shoes acts as a check upon the prisoners holding any discourse. The building was perfectly clean, and free from that tainted atmosphere which generally pervades a prison, the cells being white-washed once a fortnight, as a preventive against the cholera, though when there is no necessity for such a precaution they are thus cleansed only from five to six times during the warm season.

From the cells we proceeded into an open square, formed by the keeper's house, prisoners' apartments, and workshops, where a part of the convicts were employed in stone-cutting, and making an addition to the building of another five-story row of cells, to be erected in the place of a wing constructed upon the old principle of confining a certain number of prisoners in one large room, by which means they had free intercourse with one another, a system found very injurious to their reformation. It