guise. Altogether I gathered that Tennessee is a country in which there is a considerable mixture of parties. It is by no means wholly Democratic and anti-black. East Tennessee, in fact, is a white man's country.

Dalton is quite a country place, but there are nevertheless one or two very tolerable hotels, at one of which I was very well treated, and had good food. The vin du pays' of this country seems to be buttermilk; everyone drinks it at meals.

THE RETURN JOURNEY.

I had hoped, if possible, to get as far as New Orleans, and thence back by the valley of the Mississippi, but the outburst of yellow fever this year has been unprecedently severe, and on account of the lateness of the frosts it continued far beyond expectation. The country is scarcely yet free from it, and the places which have suffered from it are quite disorganised. Even Chattanooga, near this, has suffered very greatly, and things have not yet returned to their usual condition. I had therefore given up the idea of making that tour, and resolved to use the rest of my time to dip into Tennessee and West Virginia, and spend a few days in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. Here, however, I saw in the papers that Parliament was summoned for the discussion of subjects interesting to me, and finding that the train in which I had taken my passage to Knoxville, in Upper Tennessee, was going on to Washington, I took a sleeping-berth, and continued my journey. This line runs on the western slope of the Alleghanies. From the glimpses I got in the night I saw no signs of a mountainous region. At dawn we had entered Virginia, but we were in a projecting angle of the State west of the watershed, and geographically a part of the Kentucky country which it adjoins. Here I at once saw we were in a great grazing country. The land was undulating and to some degree hilly, fenced off into large grass parks. The grass at this season is short, but seems close natural grass. Some of the higher parts looked like good sheep walks, and there were a good many sheep, but many more cattle, which at this time of the year were principally in the lower pastures; I saw many herds of large fine well-bred looking cattle, shorthorns and the like; also many good horses. There was a good deal of wood in

parts, but most of the grass land was clean and free from stumps or weeds. There was a hard frost this morning, and a little snow on the higher parts of the road, but the weather was bright and clear and became warmer in the middle of the day. Some corn is grown in this country, but it is mostly in grass. The same style of country continued as we ran on, passing over several ridges and crossing several streams, but we came to nothing very precipitous or difficult all the way to the highest point crossing the Alleghanies. We then passed through a valley skirted by high hills down to the Virginia 'Piedmont' country, as it is called, on the eastern slope of the range. There seemed to be a decided change as soon as we crossed the watershed-redder soil, much more cultivation of wheat and corn, less pasture-and what there is seems to be more made of artificial grass. up We kept on through the Piedmont country pretty near the hills, and much accented, and so continued till dark. In the evening the country seemed to be getting flatter. The hills are a good deal cleared in parts, but there is still a great deal of wood upon them. There were some good grazing grounds, and a good many cattle and horses on this eastern slope, but it is not so much a grazing country as that to the west. This country looks at the worst now, the grass being brown, the trees without leaves, and the fields ploughed up, but I dare say in the spring it merits the encomiums which the Virginians are in the habit of bestowing upon it. Throughout the route to-day the houses of the white inhabitants sermed better than those I had previously seen. They gave one the idea of pretty well-to-do farmers, and there were a good many houses which seemed quite up to the pretensions of small squireens, or gentleman-farmers. All along the route I noticed more blacks than I had expected to see in this higher country. Probably the vicinity of the railway accounts for that; but even away from the railway stations there seemed to be a good many black families, living in huts as miserable as those I had seen farther South. Probably the blacks are mere labourers and dependents.

The eating at the stations where we stopped for meals seemed always very tolerable, and I noticed that in this country there is good fresh butter. I cannot understand why they cannot have it in the civilised North. Even at Washington in the best hotels and everywhere else they have nasty salt butter; and at New York one or two people seem only re

cently to have made quite a discovery by making good fresh butter, which they can sell at a dollar a pound, for it is a rarity.

I slept at Washington, and spent most of the next day there. The weather was lovely, and the place bright and lively-looking. People are evidently beginning to assemble for the ensuing meeting of Congress, and one sees many smart, well-dressed women in the streets. The trees, however, have lost their leaves, which takes off from the beauty which I noticed in the place a few weeks ago.

I went to the Treasury, where they kindly gave me the official papers on the silver question. It seems clear that up to 1873 silver was a complete legal tender, and that anyone might bring silver to be coined and get silver certificates at once. I went again to see my friend General E, of the Educational Department, and met at his office a New Hampshire member of Congress, who seemed shocked at the idea that I was going to take my Southern experiences as a specimen of the United States. He insists that the Northern States are very different. There, he says, the township system is in full force-that is, in New England-the people at large frequently meet together in Township Assembly to vote for school and other arrangements, and to control the expenditure. Certainly I feel I have still to do New England, if I live and have another opportunity of visiting the States.

I visited the Agricultural Department, and saw General D, the head of it, who is very enthusiastic over his work, though somehow there seem to be a good many scoffers about the Department. They have a capital collection of all sorts of produce, and are now making great efforts to introduce useful plants and new products. General Dhopes to acclimatise the bamboo. He is trying the Japanese variety,, which stands frost. There seems no doubt that the tea-plant thrives in the Southern States; but people have not really learnt how to manufacture tea. The Liberian coffee is a variety of the coffee-plant, which, it seems, unlike the Arabian plant, will stand an ordinary tropical climate, and bears well, even down to the level of the sea, within the tropics. It struck me that in India we ought to take advantage of the experience of the United States-for instance, to obtain improved varieties of Indian corn and other plants.

There was again a very good sunset to-day, Washington seems to have a specialty for sunsets.

In the evening I took passage in the sleeping-cars for New York. The Pullman was a good deal crowded, and a crowded Pullman is decidedly not comfortable. I met a great traveller who had spent twenty-eight nights in the cars during the last six weeks, and he confirms what I had suspected, that under such circumstances as we had this night it is a mistake to secure a lower berth. The upper berths, for those who can climb up, are much more airy and comfortable. This gentleman is a resident of the city of Mexico, which, he says, is a place of 250,000 inhabitants, and quite civilised.

We reached New York in the morning. I again went to the Windsor. There are now a great many winter residents there, but the place is quite quiet. The weather in New York is not yet good winter weather. They have had it unusually warm for the season, and it is now raw and rainy.

I called on Mr. P, a gentleman to whom I owe much kindness, and went with him to the business part of the city-down town,' as they call it. Here I had some talk with several good financial authorities on American railways. Their tone about them is generally unfavourable—the moral of the very safe men is that no shares are safe. They say that the capital value of the lines is generally in the books at a much higher figure than that at which they could now be made, and that the only safe things are the first bonds of the very best lines. These lines, they say, are at least worth the amount of the first bonds. According to them if the shares of a railway are above par then you may with tolerable prudence buy the first bonds, and that is all. The bonds are liable to be paid off after a certain time, but some of them run for as long as thirty years, and, as they say, that is much farther than anyone looks forward in this country.

In the evening I dined with Mr. O, and met General B a name well known in the war. He is a New Englander, from Rhode Island. He says that though, no doubt, as I had before been told, land in New England had fallen much in value, and some of it had gone out of cultivation, there has been quite recently considerable signs of improvement in New England farming prospects, and a rise again in the value of the land, in consequence of many people who have been driven from commerce in the bad times having come back to the land. He, too, says that many Irish have bought land in New England, and they do not do badly. He

gives the same account as I had heard before of the good working of the New England township system. He says there are not usually any commons, only village greens; but he knows some instances of considerable common pastures. which were originally reserved. One or two still remain; others have been divided up or sold by a vote of the township. It seems clear that in America commons are quite exceptional, and not the habit of the country.

The people whom I meet here dwell much on the effect of the Southern election practices, and the attempt to make a solid South, in producing a solid North on the other side of the question.

Mr. O who has had much experience of the States on the Mississippi, gives an account of them which tallies pretty well with what I had already learned. He says the relations between the whites and blacks are ordinarily good enough, and they would get on sufficiently well together if it were not for political difficulties, which in Mississippi and Louisiana are considerable. The blacks make capital labourers. His experience is that on Southern railways he gets more work done for sixty cents than for a dollar in the North. He has had much railway experience in several States in which he has had occasion to get Bills passed and various measures sanctioned. I asked him about the honesty of the local Legislatures. He says some new States have been rather bad, but that for some years in the States through which his lines passed they have not been approached for money. The effect of the provision in the Illinois Constitution against special legislation in favour of corporations has really been considerable. The law is carried out in practice. People who want privileges can only get them under the general laws applicable to all. I have not yet looked up the particulars as to the way in which these things are managed in Illinois and other States; but in Georgia, where they have a provision of the same kind, I understand that the general laws for the granting of charters and the like having been passed, people who want them apply to the Courts which adjudicate the question. Mr. O says there is still more planting on a large scale in Mississippi and the adjoining countries than in the Atlantic States, and he instances people who, he says, are there doing well, cultivating on a large scale with hired negro labour. The lands near the river in Missis