inted Astracan
cap, with a heavy tassel of silk.

"So you are at work here, I guess?"

"Yes," said the young gentleman, "we are."

"Well, I do hope you will be prepared in Kanaday, for though we don't
approve some of our president's notions, we shall sustain him to a
man; and, as soon as ever war is declared, we shall pour two or three
hundred thousand men into your country and annex it."

"Oh, is that all!" replied the youth; "I advise you then, general, to
take care of yourself, for we expect sixty thousand regulars from
England."

"I didn't hear that before," said General Crispianus; and no doubt he
returned to his last somewhat discomfited. _Ne sutor ultra crepidam._

Before his departure, however, he went to see a newly invented
pile-driver, which was at work, and, after looking at the _monkey_ for
some time, which was raised and lowered by two horses, and drove the
piles very quickly, with enormous power, he said to his friend
suddenly, "Waal, I swar, that does act sassy."

So much for General Crispianus.

We passed the night aboard of the Thames, preferring her spacious
accommodations to those of the hotels in such a hot season, when the
rain poured in torrents; but sleep was out of the question, for the
climate of Sierra Leone could scarcely be more insufferable than the
atmosphere then and there.

The rain cleared away in the morning, and a prospect of Lake Erie in
a rage presented itself; so we could not quit the miserable apology
for a harbour which Buffalo Creek affords, crowded, narrow, and nasty,
until half past nine, and then, with great difficulty, on board the
Emerald, a small Canadian steamboat, worked out amidst a string or
maze of all sorts of merchant-craft.

Lake Erie presented an appearance exactly like the shallow sea, green
and foamy, and very angry; and, in passing the shoals at the entrance
of the Niagara river, it rolled the boat so that there was some
danger; and one old lady vowed that she would never quit the United
States any more.

A nice comfortable-looking Massachusetts farmer, the very type of a
Buckinghamshire grazier of the year 1800, who was her husband, took a
fancy to me because I was endeavouring to assure his old dame that she
was not in real danger, and told me various stories, for he was very
loquacious.

Among other things, he said it was very disgraceful to the
Buffalonians to allow such a miscreant as Benjamin Lett, whom we saw
on the wharf, be at large, a