I Was Roused Early By A General Thumping And Clattering, And, Making The Hasty Toilette Which One Is Compelled To

Do when destitute of appliances, I found the stage at the early hour of six ready at the door; and,

To my surprise, the coachman was muffled up in furs, and the morning was intensely cold.

This vehicle was of the same construction as that which I have already described in Nova Scotia; but, being narrower, was infinitely more uncomfortable. Seven gentlemen and two ladies went inside, in a space where six would have been disagreeably crowded. Mr. Sandford preferred the outside, where he could smoke his cigar without molestation. The road was very hilly, and several times our progress was turned into retrogression, for the horses invariably refused to go up hill, probably, poor things! because they felt their inability to drag the loaded wain up the steep declivities which we continually met with. The passengers were therefore frequently called upon to get out and walk - a very agreeable recreation, for the ice was the thickness of a penny; the thermometer stood at 35°; there was a piercing north-east wind; and though the sun shone from a cloudless sky, his rays had scarcely any power. We breakfasted at eight, at a little wayside inn, and then travelled till midnight with scarcely any cessation.

The way would have been very tedious had it not been enlivened by the eccentricities of Mr. Latham, an English passenger. After breakfast the conversation in the stage was pretty general, led by the individual aforesaid, who lectured and preached, rather than conversed. Few subjects were untouched by his eloquence; he spoke with equal ease on a difficult point in theology, and on the conformation of the sun. He lectured on politics, astronomy, chemistry, and anatomy with great fluency and equal incorrectness. In describing the circulation of the blood, he said, "It's a purely metaphysical subject;" and the answering remark, "It is the most purely physical," made him vehemently angry. He spoke of the sun by saying, "I've studied the sun; I know it as well as I do this field; it's a dark body with a luminous atmosphere, and a climate more agreeable than that of the earth" - thus announcing as a fact what has been timidly put forward as a theory only by our greatest astronomers.

Politics soon came on the tapis, when he attacked British institutions violently, with an equal amount of ignorance and presumption, making such glaring misstatements that I felt bound to contradict them; when he, not liking to be lowered in the estimation of his companions, contested the points in a way which closely bordered upon rudeness.

He made likewise a very pedantic display of scientific knowledge, in virtue of an occasional attendance at meetings of mechanics' institutes, and asked the gentlemen for "We're all gentlemen here" - numerous questions, to which they could not reply, when one of the party took courage to ask him why fire burned. "Oh, because of the hydrogen in the air, of course," was the complacent answer. "I beg your pardon, but there is no hydrogen in atmospheric air." - "There is; I know the air well: it is composed one-half of hydrogen, the other half of nitrogen and oxygen." "You're surely confounding it with water." - "No, I am as well acquainted with the composition of water as with that of air; it is composed of the same gases, only in different proportions." This was too monstrous, and his opponent, while contradicting the statement, could not avoid a hearty laugh at its absurdity, in which the others joined without knowing why, which so raised the choler of this irascible gentleman, that it was most difficult to smooth matters. He contended that he was right and the other wrong; that his propositions were held by all chemists of eminence on both sides of the water; that, though he had not verified the elements of these fluids by analysis, he was perfectly acquainted with their nature; that the composition of air was a mere theory, but that his opponent's view was not held by any savans of note. The latter merely replied, "When you next light a candle you may be thankful that there is no hydrogen in the air;" after which there was a temporary cessation of hostilities.

But towards night, being still unwarned by the discomfitures of the morning, he propounded some questions which his companions could not answer; among which was, "Why are there black sheep?" How he would have solved this difficult problem in natural history, I do not know. Mystification sat on all faces, when the individual who had before attacked Mr. Latham's misstatements, took up the defence of the puzzled colonists by volunteering to answer the question if he would explain how "impossible roots enter equations." No reply was given to this, when, on some of the gentlemen urging him, perhaps rather mischievously, to answer, he retorted angrily, - "I'm master of mathematics as well as of other sciences; but I see there's an intention to make fun of me. I don't choose to be made a butt of, and I'll show you that I can be as savage as other people." This threat had the effect of producing a total silence for the remainder of the journey; but Mr. Latham took an opportunity of explaining to me that in this speech he intended no personal allusion, but had found it necessary to check the ill-timed mirth in the stage. In spite of his presumption and pedantry, he never lost an opportunity of showing kindness. I saw him last in the very extremity of terror, during a violent gale off the coast of Maine.

For the first fifty miles after leaving the Bend, our road lay through country as solitary and wild as could be conceived - high hills, covered with endless forests of small growth. I looked in vain for the gigantic trees so celebrated by travellers in America. If they ever grew in this region, they now, in the shape of ships, are to be found on every sea where England's flag waves.

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