As my readers may note with more or less patience, it takes time for New Netherland folk to get started on a long journey. Ours was a long journey, in truth, as it required two days and a night to accomplish it. The express schedule on the Boston and Albany Railroad is four hours between the two cities; but there was no express travel in the forties except by passenger packets on the Erie Canal, above referred to. These fast flyers raced along at the top speed of four miles an hour making stops only at the locks or bridges or to change horses or to take someone on board or to let someone step ashore. If my mother’s visits to her relatives extended as far as Schenectady, she made the journey in one of these Swiftsure liners, perhaps the _Swallow_, or the _Gleam_ or the _Alida_, usually accompanied by one or two of us children; and a very pleasant journey it was to be sure in fair weather. To glide smoothly along through the country on the deck of a canal boat is a method of locomotion affording opportunities to view the landscape o’er with much comfort and constant though not too rapid changes of entertainment. Necessarily running as near the shore as possible, a slight shift of the tiller by an obliging helmsman would enable a small boy to effect a landing and take a quick look into the canal blacksmith shop, or to walk a stretch with the youth driving the horses, and then re-embark without attracting too much attention. In this leisurely progress through towns and villages and farming neighborhoods, something like a real acquaintance could be made with persons and with places not otherwise to be formed except perhaps on a tour afoot. Lasting friendships and even romances have resulted, before now, from the exchange of greetings and gossip between packet-passengers and people on the canal bank waiting for papers, packages, or messages, or merely interested in seeing the Swiftsure boat go by.