So long ago as the summer of 18--, I was a traveller in these regions, making my way into Canada. In those days there were no railways in America. By the steamer, _Chancellor Livingston_, I had ascended the Hudson to Albany in something less than twenty-four hours. From Albany to Lake Champlain I was one of a party chartering a post-coach, and permitted by the terms of our contract to make as easy stages as might suit our pleasure or convenience. At Whitehall we took a small sailing-craft down the lake a hundred miles and more, to Plattsburgh; and thence, resuming the land route, made our way into Canada. Compared with the more modern rate of travel, we went at a snail's pace; but with all its inconveniences, our way of making the journey had its peculiar benefits and charms. We were less superficial observers of men and things than railway passengers can possibly be. We were intelligent persons; we conversed with the men of the soil; we asked questions of plain farmers and sailors, and heard with pleasure their long stories of ancient battles in those parts, from the days of the Iroquois to the days of General Brock. We stopped by the roadside and examined places of interest, and took views of beautiful landscapes from commanding heights. And now I can say of my route into Canada what Wordsworth says of the Wye:-- "Those beauteous scenes, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye; But oft in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towers and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart." In many such hours I have refreshed my memory by recurring also to such books of tourists as I have at hand, but especially in the later authors of this kind I have found little satisfaction. They all seem to have hurried over their journey without stopping to take breath; and I am inclined to believe that I was lucky in beginning my travels, while as yet the spirit of the nineteenth century was only just putting on its seven-leagued boots, and still permitted the good habit of hastening slowly. Let me, then, go over my former stages, at least in fancy; and while I interweave my histories with the personal adventures of an old-fashioned traveller, let me be met also by some of the indulgence humanely accorded to narrative old age.