Soon after his visit to the President, we find our errant Frenchman steaming down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. At Cincinnati, when about to embark on a steamer pompously advertised as "The splendid and fast-running John Hancock," he is somewhat startled by a conversation between two Americans, from which he gathers that the said "Hancock" is a worthless boat, whose boilers have been condemned by the inspector, and which the insurance companies refuse to take, but out of whose rotten hull and rickety engines the considerate proprietors propose to squeeze a little more passage-money at risk of the passengers' lives. So M. Marmier takes his place by the "Western World," also announced as "splendid and fast-running," but which, he flatters himself, is more sea, or at least river worthy, and devotes a few pages to the perils of the West, the recklessness of steamboat captains in America, and the unpaternal nature of a Government which imposes no check on the employment of damaged steamers. Explosions, conflagrations, inundations, snags, sawyers, and races--he makes out a terrible list of dangers, and estimates at thirty or forty per annum the number of steamers lost in the Western waters. "The average existence of a boat is here about four years. In four years it must have brought in its cost, with interest. If it lasts longer, it is by unhoped-for good luck. But the American does not trouble his head about difficulties or perils. He _must_ travel, and he travels at all risks. You have doubtless read the account of that terrible explosion of the "Louisiana," which, about a month ago, discharged the fragments of her boilers and some hundreds of corpses upon the quay of New Orleans. Next day, not a steamer had a passenger the less. _Go ahead_ is the American motto. Is there a new territory to explore at three hundred leagues distance, a sale of goods to be effected north or south--_go ahead!_ The weather may be bad, the roads covered with snow, the journey long and difficult, no matter--_go ahead_. The steamer by which they are to go is of bad repute, is ill organised and worse commanded; there is danger of its sinking at the very first casualty; never mind--_go ahead_. Fatigue and danger are nothing--movement before everything. I ought to admire such intrepidity; but, with my old-fashioned European notions, I regret to think that the seductions of fortune can inspire as great courage as the chivalrous sentiments of glory, religion, and love."