The train still creaked and bumped now and then over the snow, squeaked, puffed, and grated, and at last came to a standstill, again went on, and again halted. At last we reached a station. Seven hours behind time! A sensation of hunger by no means slight fell upon us. Frost is an appetizer of undoubted merit. We had neglected laying in a _viaticum_. More prudent and accustomed travellers produced flasks and brown-paper parcels, and all the wonderful things which Americans consume on the voyage. Let me not be fastidious, however; for after a time I envied men who were discussing pleasantly fragments of unseemly cakes, spice-nuts, and brandy-balls for breakfast. My companions prowled up and down the horrid car, reeking with the stove-drawn odours of many bodies during the night--they sought food like young lions. Pah! what an atmosphere it was!--all windows closed by reason of cold intense outside, the hateful stoves, one in the centre of the car, and one at each end, heated almost to redness, surrounded by men who crowded up, and chewed tobacco, and smote the iron surface with hissing burnt-sienna-coloured jets!--frowsty, fusty, and muggy exceedingly. There was a deposit of train-oil,--a hot humanised dew all over us. And water, there was none to wash with. So I applied a handful of snow gathered on the carriage platform to my face and hands in lieu thereof, and got back to my seat just as A----n returned from some distant part of the train with hands full of apples. They were delicious, and with three or four of them, and a few cigars, we managed to construct a charming breakfast. It was so dark when the train reached Kingston, that we could see nothing more than the outlines of the station. I was exceedingly anxious to visit a place of so much importance historically, commercially, and strategically, and fully intended to remain there for some days on my return to Toronto; but the Fates ordained that it was not to be, and all my personal knowledge of Kingston was derived from that glimpse in the dark of the railway terminus, and certain steeples and spires rising above the snow. But the position of the city confers upon it a very high place on the list of military posts for the defence of Canada, and some considerations connected with it will be discussed hereafter.