I stopped at Baltimore only long enough to see the city. It was Sunday, and as I could make no visits, and was anxious to arrive in good time at Washington, I took advantage of the first train. The capital of the United States is laid out upon a gigantic scale, and, consequently, portions of the different quarters are often to be traced only by isolated houses here and there,--a condition which has caused it to be called the "City of Magnificent Distances." Some of the streets are very handsome, and the capitol itself is really imposing. Their profound veneration for the founder of their liberty and their republic is a noble trait of the American people. The evidences of this are to be seen everywhere. No less than two hundred towns, villages, and counties bear his name, rather to the inconvenience of the postal administration. After having visited the capitol and the presidential mansion, and delivered my letters for the Prussian Minister, I went to the Museum of the National Institute. I was impatient to satisfy myself as to the scientific value of the results obtained in the field of my own studies by the voyage of Captain Wilkes around the world, --this voyage having been the object of equally exaggerated praise and criticism. I confess that I was agreeably surprised by the richness of the zoological and geological collections; I do not think any European expedition has done more or better; and in some departments, in that of the Crustacea, for example, the collection at Washington surpasses in beauty and number of specimens all that I have seen. It is especially to Dr. Pickering and Mr. Dana that these collections are due. As the expedition did not penetrate to the interior of the continents in tropical regions, the collections of birds and mammals, which fell to the charge of Mr. Peale, are less considerable. Mr. Gray tells me, however, that the botanical collections are very large. More precious, perhaps, than all the collections are the magnificent drawings of mollusks, zoophytes, fishes, and reptiles, painted from life by Mr. Drayton. All these plates, to the number of about six hundred, are to be engraved, and indeed are already, in part, executed. I can only compare them to those of the Astrolabe, although they are very superior in variety of position and naturalness of attitude to those of the French Expedition. This is particularly true of the mollusks and fishes. The zoophytes are to be published; they are admirable in detail. The hydrographic portion and the account of the voyage, edited by Captain Wilkes (unhappily he was absent and I did not see him), has been published for some time, and comprises an enormous mass of information, its chief feature being charts to the number of two hundred. It is amazing; the number of soundings extraordinarily large.* (* Agassiz subsequently took some part in working up the fish collections from this expedition, but the publication was stopped for want of means to carry it on.)