We stop at all the landing stages to take in freight; sometimes it is man, sometimes it is mutton, the fruits of the earth, or the fruits of human kind. From some unexplained reason we make quite a long stop at “Saratoga,” a pretty little settlement lying along the east shore of the river. It is a striking contrast to that fashionable Saratoga, far away in the eastern province, with its gigantic hotels, its luxuries, its trim promenades, its music, its whirl of gaiety, and rush and roar of animated life--a seething cauldron of perfumed humanity, highly decorated and ready for daily sacrifice on the altar of fashion. There it is art, or nature clipped and twisted and trained, so far from its original simplicity, that you cannot recognise a single feature--in fact, Nature in masquerade; in brilliant, gorgeous masquerade, it is true, but hiding the naked loveliness of Nature’s self. Who could recognise the chaste beauty of a “Venus di Medici” beneath Worth’s latest costume, with decorations of Tiffany’s brightest jewels? Here is Nature’s purest self in her own Arcadian simplicity, clothed with golden orange groves and blooming gardens, aglow with brilliant-hued flowers running all along the river side, nodding at their own shadows in the stream. No belles nor beaux stroll through these lovely solitudes; not a petticoat is in sight; only a few coloured folk are working in the gardens, as our father Adam worked in our lost inheritance, “the Garden of Eden.” The bees are gathering honey, and the invisible insect world seems all astir, filling the air with a dreamy drowsy hum, just stirring the waves of silence to a soft, low-uttered harmony. Some few of our fellow passengers go ashore and ramble among the groves for half an hour, when they return loaded with the luscious fruit, which they seem to enjoy all the more having been allowed to gather all they desired for themselves.