The bustle and drive in the trading quarters of the city is very great. The merchants and their assistants have a hurried manner of doing business, discernible in a moment to a stranger, which is much to be deprecated, and too often leads, as I afterwards found, to disastrous results. Business with these men is in general quite a "go-a-head" sort of affair, and not being accompanied with method, in many cases leads to an embarrassed state of circumstances. Thus it frequently happens, that on investigation, the assets of a merchant who has stopped payment and is a supposed bankrupt, realize more than enough to pay the creditors, and the party finds to his agreeable surprise, that his position is not so bad after all. The churches and other places of public worship in New York have a temporary appearance, the steeples of the former being, when I visited the city, chiefly of painted-wood. This, I believe, is partly the reason why bells are not used, although a friend in whose presence I noticed this, stated that contempt for so English a custom had much to do with their disuse. If so, the prejudice is not confined to New York alone, for I was not cheered by the inspiriting sound of a peal in any other part of the Union I visited, although I think I have heard they are in use in Philadelphia and some of the eastern cities. The time I had allotted to remain in New York having expired, and being anxious to proceed on my route before the close of navigation, I reluctantly bade adieu to my kind friends in that city, and made preparations to pursue my way to the more western part of the Union, hoping to reach the Mississippi country before the season when the rivers and canals leading to it would be locked up in ice. CHAPTER II. "See how yon flaming herald treads The ridged and rolling waves, As, crashing o'er their crested heads, She bows her surly slaves; With foam before and fire behind, She rends the clinging sea, That flies before the roaring wind, Beneath her hissing lea." HOLMES--_The Steam Boat_.