As he sailed out of Havre the American ships in the harbor ran up their flags in his honor and fired their guns in salute, an intimation of the welcome that was awaiting him on the other side of the Atlantic. The _Cadmus_ reached Staten Island on August fifteenth, and the guest landed in the midst of cheering throngs. Most of the men who had taken part with him in the birth of the country had now passed off the scene, and to Americans Lafayette was a tradition, one of the few survivors of the nation’s early days of strife and triumph. He was no longer the slim and eager boy of 1777; he was now a large, stout man, slightly lame, but his smile was still the same, and so was the delight with which he greeted the people. The United States had grown prodigiously in the interval between this visit and his last. Instead of thirteen separate colonies there were now twenty-four united States. The population had increased from three to twelve millions. What had been wilderness was now ripe farmland; backwoods settlements had grown into flourishing towns built around the church and the schoolhouse. Agriculture and commerce were thriving everywhere, and everywhere Lafayette saw signs of the wisdom, honesty, and self-control which had established a government under which men could live in freedom and happiness. His visit carried him far and wide through the United States. From New York he went by way of New Haven and Providence to Boston, from there to Portsmouth by the old colonial road through Salem, Ipswich, and Newburyport. From there he returned to New York by Lexington, Worcester, Hartford, and the Connecticut River. The steamer _James Kent_ took him to the old familiar scenes on the banks of the Hudson, reminding him of the day when he and Washington had ridden to the house of Benedict Arnold. Starting again from New York he traveled through New Jersey to Philadelphia, the scene of the stirring events of his first visit, and thence to Baltimore and Washington. He went to Mount Vernon, Yorktown, Norfolk, Monticello, Raleigh, Charleston, and Savannah. In the spring of 1825 he was at New Orleans, and from there he ascended the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, sailed up Lake Erie, saw the Falls of Niagara, went through Albany and as far north as Portland, Maine. Returning by Lake Champlain he reached New York in time for the great celebration of the Fourth of July in 1825. He had made a very comprehensive tour of the United States. The whole of this long journey was one triumphal progress. He constantly drove through arches bearing the words “Welcome, Lafayette!” Every house where he stopped became a Mecca for admiring crowds. The country had never welcomed any man as it did the gallant Frenchman. Balls, receptions, dinners, speeches, gifts of every kind were thrust upon him; and the leading men of the republic were constantly by his side.