Mile-stone after mile-stone has been left behind us. We have been hindered by Indian ambushes along the wayside, and have been obliged often to pick out arrows shot into our covered emigrant-wagon, as we have toiled up and over the New England hills, through the Mohawk Valley, and along the broad bottom-lands of Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. French gentlemen with pleasant manners have often stopped us at cross-roads, and attempted by very sharp arguments to convince us that we were on the wrong track. Several large parties of these Gallic gentlemen, at various narrow parts of the way, especially in 1689, 1710, 1745, and notably for nine consecutive years from 1754 to 1763, have warned us back, and indeed endeavored to turn us entirely off the road, claiming that it was a private one of their own. But past all these have we succeeded in pushing our historic journey, shunning the miry places left open by colonial negligence, the shaky bridges full of witch holes, the badly mended ruts of religious bigotry, and the rough patches of corduroy posts, laid crosswise over trembling, low-lying swamps of political scheming and financial speculation. Here and there we have found bits of plank road, laboriously and ambitiously placed over the public highway in front of colleges, school-houses, churches, and occasionally through pleasant thrifty villages. Now and then we have ascended, after much patient up-hill work, to large, noble summits of civil or religious freedom, commanding wide horizons and broad views; but often, too, have we felt a sinking of spirits, a saddening depression, as we have been compelled to descend to lower levels and to jog along again over wearisome flats. We have been detained occasionally by civil-spoken English governors and royal councillors, who have persuaded us to alight and partake of their cheer, which, it must be admitted, was much better than that which we obtained along the common road; but well knowing that it had never been honestly paid for or justly earned, we should have found it more palatable had it been thus properly seasoned. Landed proprietors, with smooth, royal manners, have, also, sometimes stopped us to state little points of difference between themselves and their North American tenants.