Our drive to Augusta, six or seven miles, was very pleasant, a heavy rain having fallen during the night and laid the oppressive dust of the day before. The road lay parallel with the Kennebec, of which we occasionally had near glimpses. The country swells back from the river in hills and ridges, without any interval of level ground; and there were frequent woods, filling up the valleys or crowning the summits. The land is good, the farms looked neat, and the houses comfortable. The latter are generally but of one story, but with large barns; and it was a good sign, that, while we saw no houses unfinished nor out of repair, one man, at least, had found it expedient to make an addition to his dwelling. At the distance of more than two miles, we had a view of white Augusta, with its steeples, and the State-House, at the farther end of the town. Observable matters along the road were the stage,--all the dust of yesterday brushed off, and no new dust contracted,--full of passengers, inside and out; among them some gentlemanly people and pretty girls, all looking fresh and unsullied, rosy, cheerful, and curious as to the face of the country, the faces of passing travellers, and the incidents of their journey; not yet damped, in the morning sunshine, by long miles of jolting over rough and hilly roads,--to compare this with their appearance at midday, and as they drive into Bangor at dusk;--two women dashing along in a wagon, and with a child, rattling pretty speedily down hill;--people looking at us from the open doors and windows;--the children staring from the wayside;--the mowers stopping, for a moment, the sway of their scythes;--the matron of a family, indistinctly seen at some distance within the house, her head and shoulders appearing through the window, drawing her handkerchief over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its breakfast,--the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the door, turning round to creep away on all fours;--a man building a flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he talked with B---- about the Boundary question, and swore fervently in favor of driving the British "into hell's kitchen" by main force.