An account of the above-named journey was published in 1849, under the title of "A Second Visit to the United States of North America." This book, in addition to descriptions of the scenery and the geology of the country, contains much general information about the people, with remarks by the author on various political questions, such as the condition of parties, the effects of almost universal suffrage, particularly on the national sense of honour and morality, the existence and evils of slavery, the state of religious feeling, the position of Churches, and the systems of education, especially when contrasted with those of England. Some of these questions about this time were exciting much attention in Great Britain, and in regard to one matter--the delimitation of the territories of the two nations in the region west of the Rocky Mountains--friction existed, which was so serious that more than once war seemed possible. On this account, probably, the "Second Visit" was a greater success, commercially speaking, than the "Travels," for it reached a third edition. FOOTNOTES: [105] Chapters xiv. and xxix. [106] "The Girvan Succession," Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., xxxviii. (1882), p. 537. [107] The capelin (_Mallotus villosus_), which still lives in the Atlantic. [108] It was also seen the following year on the coast of Virginia, and on that of Norway in both 1845 and 1846. [109] He says that the alleged sea-serpent washed ashore at Stronsa (Orkneys) in 1808 is proved by the bones (some of which are preserved) to have been this animal. [110] The formation, however, does not belong to the Carboniferous system, but is shown by its fossils to be Jurassic in age. [111] It is described and figured in later editions of the "Principles of Geology," chap. xv. (eleventh edition). [112] A species of _Gnathodon_. [113] _Gnathodon cuneatus._ [114] A bayou is the name given to an old channel of the river. When the latter is making a series of horseshoe curves, the stream often cuts through the neck of land which separates its nearest parts. The water then takes the shortest course, the entrances to the old channel are silted up, and it becomes a horseshoe-shaped pool. [115] T. Carlyle ("Letter on Secular Education"). CHAPTER IX. STEADY PROGRESS. The "Principles of Geology" had been completed and published for thirteen years, yet catastrophism, as we learn from a correspondence with Edward Forbes,[116] dated September, 1846, was dying hard. "Agassiz, Alcide D'Orbigny, and their followers [were still] trying to make out sudden revolutions in organic life in support of equally hypothetical catastrophes in the physical history of the globe."[117] A remark in Forbes's reply is striking:--