Bumping and splashing over the rough tree-lined roads those spring days, they unquestionably discussed the political situation, but these discussions were only the continuation of others that had been proceeding throughout the previous fall and winter. If politics was the object of the journey, they were both remarkably successful in covering their tracks. There is nothing in the letter Jefferson wrote his daughter Mary to indicate anything more than a pleasure jaunt.[317] In a letter to his other daughter, Martha, we hear much of fishing for speckled trout, salmon, and bass, of the strawberries in bloom, of vegetation and agricultural conditions--but nothing of politics.[318] To his son-in-law he wrote descriptions of historic places, of botanical objects and scenery, and of running foul of the blue law in Vermont prohibiting traveling on Sunday.[319] The one reference to the journey in the correspondence of Madison merely says that ‘it was a very agreeable one, and carried us through an interesting country, new to us both.’[320] In none of these letters do we find a single reference to politics or politicians. Something is made of the call of the travelers on Burr and Livingston when in New York, and on Governor Clinton at Albany; but their conduct would have been suspicious only if they had failed to observe the ordinary amenities of social life in calling upon the leading public characters in the towns through which they passed. Still we may safely surmise that they found time while waiting for the fish to bite to exchange views on the necessity of organizing an opposition to the Federalists. It is even possible that out of these conversations on country roads actually sprang the Democratic Party, but there is no evidence. VI