That there must be in America a profound feeling of affection for our country is shown by the avoidance of war when we recognized the rebels as belligerents; and, again, at the time of the _Trent_ affair, when the surface cry was overwhelmingly for battle, and the cabinet only able to tide it over by promising the West war with England as soon as the rebellion was put down. “One war at a time, gentlemen,” said Lincoln. The man who, of all in America, had most to lose by war with England, said to me of the _Trent_ affair: “I was written to by C---- to do all I could for peace. I wrote him back that if our attorney-general decided that our seizure of the men was lawful, I would spend my last dollar in the cause.” The Americans, everywhere affectionate toward the individual Englishman, make no secret of their feeling that the first advances toward a renewal of the national friendship ought to come from us. They might remind us that our Maori subjects have a proverb, “Let friends settle their disputes as friends.” CHAPTER XXVIII. AMERICA. We are coasting again, gliding through calm blue waters, watching the dolphins as they play, and the boobies as they fly stroke and stroke with the paddles of the ship. Mountains rise through the warm misty air, and form a long towering line upon the upper skies. Hanging high above us are the Volcano of Fire and that of Water--twin menacers of Guatamala City. In the sixteenth century, the water-mountain drowned it; in the eighteenth, it was burnt by the fire-hill. Since then, the city has been shaken to pieces by earthquakes, and of sixty thousand men and women, hardly one escaped. Down the valley, between the peaks, we have through the mahogany groves an exquisite distant view toward the city. Once more passing on, we get peeps, now of West Honduras, and now of the island coffee plantations of Costa Rica. The heat is terrible. It was just here, if we are to believe Drake, that he fell in with a shower so hot and scalding, that each drop burnt its hole through his men‘s clothes as they hung up to dry. “Steep stories,” it is clear, were known before the plantation of America. Now that the time has come for a leave-taking of the continent, we can begin to reflect upon facts gleaned during visits to twenty-nine of the forty-five Territories and States--twenty-nine empires the size of Spain.