Our driver, a merry fellow, called out that we must look out "not to get mixed up of a heap," and rattled at it. I did not require much experience to decide that travelling over a road of corduroy was by no means going on velvet; but the effect was not so bad as I had expected to prove it: by holding fast, one could keep one's seat tolerably well, without much fear of dislocation; but I would strongly recommend any man having loose teeth, to walk over this stage, unless he desires to have them shaken out of his head. From Batavia the road is execrable, and the country without a feature to interest or amuse, uncultivated, wild, and dismal. It was about half an hour before sunset when we entered Buffalo, the City of the Lakes, the entrepot for these inland oceans. BUFFALO. America is, perhaps, in our day, the only country wherein these infant capitals, these embryo cities, may be seen, and their growth noted, as they are gradually developed before living eyes. A very few years back, this frontier, now so populous and thriving, was only known as "the Wilderness;" and upon the edge of this, washed by the waters of Lake Erie, has Buffalo sprung up. The great source of that gratification which is felt on a near view of this, and other places of similar origin, is to be found in the feeling that they derive their being from the prosperous industry of our fellow-men, and that in their increase we behold its happy continuance. They are the vouchers which America may fairly produce to show that the fruition of liberty has been with her productive of increased energy and spreading enterprise. These places have not, like St. Petersburg, been raised up in obedience to the policy or the caprice of a despot; the work of bondsmen, founded amidst pestilence, and cemented with blood and tears. The unfinished palace of the half-savage prince already the tomb of hundreds of its miserable builders; a city of marble founded upon a marsh. Here, it is true, was a wonder having no parallel, of which the living of the last century might have observed the progress,--one may add, the completion, as, should its lord so will, the present generation may look upon its abandonment and depopulation;--but the cause of the existence of St. Petersburg calls up no generous sympathy with its progress, because we know that the labour was constrained; and from its story, when fairly told, we rise, not with pride in the power of our kind, which had overcome so many obstacles, but with pity for the suffering and debasement of humanity constrained to such exertion. On the contrary, these yet humble cities of America, so humble as sometimes to draw from the far-travelled a sneer upon the application of the word, are surrounded by a healthful, moral atmosphere: their infancy is vigorous, giving promise of a long endurance and ultimate greatness, only to be limited by the will of the King of kings.