ntific annals
of our country. We started on Wednesday last, to the number of about
eight hundred people, in carriages constructed as I before described to
you. The most intense curiosity and excitement prevailed, and though the
weather was uncertain, enormous masses of densely packed people lined the
road, shouting and waving hats and handkerchiefs as we flew by them.
What with the sight and sound of these cheering multitudes and the
tremendous velocity with which we were borne past them, my spirits rose
to the true champagne height, and I never enjoyed anything so much as the
first hour of our progress. I had been unluckily separated from my
mother in the first distribution of places, but by an exchange of seats
which she was enabled to make she rejoined me, when I was at the height
of my ecstasy, which was considerably damped by finding that she was
frightened to death, and intent upon nothing but devising means of
escaping from a situation which appeared to her to threaten with instant
annihilation herself and all her travelling companions. While I was
chewing the cud of this disappointment, which was rather bitter, as I
expected her to be as delighted as myself with our excursion, a man flew
by us, calling out through a speaking trumpet to stop the engine, for
that somebody in the directors' car had sustained an injury. We were all
stopped accordingly and presently a hundred voices were heard exclaiming
that Mr. Huskisson was killed. The confusion that ensued is
indescribable; the calling out from carriage to carriage to ascertain the
truth, the contrary reports which were sent back to us, the hundred
questions eagerly uttered at once, and the repeated and urgent demands
for surgical assistance, created a sudden turmoil that was quite
sickening. At last we distinctly ascertained that the unfortunate man's
thigh was broken.

"From Lady W--, who was in the duke's carriage, and within three yards of
the spot where the accident happened, I had the following details, the
horror of witnessing which we were spared through our situation behind
the great carriage. The engine had stopped to take in a supply of water,
and several of the gentlemen in the directors' carriage had jumped out to
look about them. Lord W--, Count Batthyany, Count Matuscenitz, and Mr.
Huskisson among the rest were standing talking in the middle of the road,
when an engine on the other line, which was parading up and down merely
to show its sp