_Nov. 17._ It is a strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to our doors and utter their complaints at our elbows. I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it,—more importunate than an Italian beggar. Why does it not keep its castle in silence, as I do? The poor President, what with preserving his popularity and doing his duty, does not know what to do. If you do not read the newspapers, you may be impeached for treason. The newspapers are the ruling power. What Congress does is an afterclap. Any other government is reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, government will go on its knees to him; this is the only treason in these days. The newspapers devote some of their columns specially to government and politics without charge, and this is all that saves it, but I never read those columns.[88] I found this afternoon, in a field of winter rye, a snapping turtle’s egg, white and elliptical like a pebble, mistaking it for which I broke it. The little turtle was perfectly formed, even to the dorsal ridge, which was distinctly visible. * * * * * “Chesipooc Sinus” is on Wytfliet’s Map of 159-. Even the Dutch were forward to claim the great river of Canada. In a map of New Belgium in Ogilby’s “America,” 1670, the St. Lawrence is also called “De Groote Rivier van Niew Nederlandt.”[89] On this same map, east of Lake Champlain, called “Lacus Irocoisiensis” or in Dutch “Meer der Irocoisen,” is a chain of mountains answering to the Green Mountains of Vermont, and “Irocoisia,” or the country of the Iroquois, between the mountains and the lake.