ght in, woolen being usually
fatal to rifle-wounds. Prairie is variously called (on the refinement
principle, I suppose) Para_a_rer; par_e_arer; and paro_a_rer. I am
afraid, my dear fellow, you will have had great difficulty in reading
all the foregoing text. I have written it, very laboriously, on my knee;
and the engine throbs and starts as if the boat were possessed with a
devil.

"SANDUSKY,
"_Sunday, Twenty-fourth April, 1842._

"We went ashore at Louisville this night week, where I left off, two
lines above; and slept at the hotel, in which we had put up before. The
Messenger being abominably slow, we got our luggage out next morning,
and started on again at eleven o'clock in the Benjamin Franklin
mail-boat: a splendid vessel, with a cabin more than two hundred feet
long, and little state-rooms affording proportionate conveniences. She
got in at Cincinnati by one o'clock next morning, when we landed in the
dark and went back to our old hotel. As we made our way on foot over the
broken pavement, Anne measured her length upon the ground, but didn't
hurt herself. I say nothing of Kate's troubles--but you recollect her
propensity? She falls into, or out of, every coach or boat we enter;
scrapes the skin off her legs; brings great sores and swellings on her
feet; chips large fragments out of her ankle-bones; and makes herself
blue with bruises. She really has, however, since we got over the first
trial of being among circumstances so new and so fatiguing, made a _most
admirable_ traveler in every respect. She has never screamed or
expressed alarm under circumstances that would have fully justified her
in doing so, even in my eyes; has never given way to despondency or
fatigue, though we have now been traveling incessantly, through a very
rough country, for more than a month, and have been at times, as you may
readily suppose, most thoroughly tired; has always accommodated herself,
well and cheerfully, to everything; and has pleased me very much, and
proved herself perfectly game.

"We remained at Cincinnati all Tuesday the nineteenth, and all that
night. At eight o'clock on Wednesday morning the twentieth, we left in
the mail-stage for Columbus: Anne, Kate, and Mr. Q. inside; I on the
box. The distance is a hundred and twenty miles; the road macadamized;
and, for an American road, very good. We were three-and-twenty hours
performing the