United States navy--and family, were caught there by the flood of invaders, as they were about to escape from Paris. We had an early dinner, and then had to prepare for another flitting, about which some of us were much exercised, for it was to take us back to New York again! I must confess to a sense of shame at such a hurried visit to the "hubbiest" of American cities. The excuse was, that there was an imperious desire on the part of our directors to see the Hudson River Line, and Albany, the capital of the State of New York, and so at 10 P.M. we were "all on board" and rattling in a Wagner palace-car over rather a rough line down South; needless to say, we did not see much of the country, though it was not easy to sleep, owing to the jumpiness of the carriages. _May 9th._--Next morning before 6 o'clock, after a journey of 230 miles, we were delivered on the platform of the station in New York. All our roads lead to it apparently! We walked through the silent streets to Sherwood House, in Fifth Avenue, where a welcome and excellent breakfast had been ordered. The arrangements, the air, and the perfect repose of the place produced a most agreeable impression. The landlord informed us that it was almost exclusively frequented as a family hotel, and that when the New York season was over he closed his doors, shut up his windows, and went off for his holiday. At 9.30 A.M. we were on our way to Albany accompanied by Mr. Vanderbilt, junior, and several of the directors of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company. Americans are justly proud of the Hudson; it delights the eye of every traveller, and in some respects, particularly in the beauty of the autumn foliage, it excels the most famous rivers of Europe. All the more ought they to wage war against the disgusting outrages on the face of nature which are permitted to disfigure its banks. The very stones prate of the whereabouts of some loathsome quack or some ludicrous nostrum, and aggravating repetitions of the same names and specifics, painted in staring colours, mile after mile, force the philanthropic traveller to sigh for a measure of dynamite, and to thirst for the ruin of the miscreants who so disturb his peace. The Hudson river-side close to the capital is not very inviting; the works of the Elevated Railway, which is preparing for a tremendous spring over its Harlem tributary, do not appeal to one's sense of the beautiful; and a squatter population in what one of my friends called "very squattery shanties" does not prepare the traveller for the long stretch of _maisons de plaisance_, country houses, airy villages, and flourishing townlets which greet his eye as the train speeds in close to the edge of the left, or east, bank. The sheer, precipitous downfall of rock, at the opposite side, called the Palisades, soon comes in view. It may be dimly thought out that the appearance of the trap rock, which is ranged in perpendicular columns, suggested the name.