Turning my looks around me, I remained for some moments motionless. This continent, perhaps unknown during the whole course of antiquity and a large number of modern centuries; the first wild destinies of that continent and its second destinies after the arrival of Christopher Columbus; the sway of the European monarchies shaken in this new world; the old society ending in young America; a republic of a hitherto unknown character ushering in a change in the human mind; the part which my country had played in these events; those seas and shores owing their independence in part to French blood and the French flag; a great man issuing from the midst of discord and the desert; Washington inhabiting a flourishing city in the same spot where William Penn[464] had bought a patch of forestland; the United States handing on to France the revolution which France had supported with her arms; lastly, my own destinies, the virgin muse which I had come to abandon to the passion of a new revelation of nature; the discoveries which I desired to attempt in the deserts which still extended their broad kingdom behind the narrow empire of a foreign civilization: such were the thoughts that revolved through my mind. [Sidenote: Chesapeake Bay.] We walked towards a dwelling-house. Woods of balsam-trees and Virginian cedars, mocking-birds and cardinal-birds proclaimed by their aspect and shade, their song and colour, that we were in a new clime. The house, which we reached in half-an-hour, combined the characteristics of an English farm-house and a West-Indian cabin. Herds of European cattle grazed in pastures surrounded by glades, in which played striped squirrels. Blacks were sawing logs of wood, whites cultivating tobacco-plants. A negress of thirteen or fourteen years of age, nearly naked and of singular beauty, opened the gate of the enclosure to us, like a young figure of Night. We bought cakes of Indian corn, chickens, eggs, milk, and returned to the ship with our demi-johns and baskets. I gave my silk handkerchief to the little African: a slave welcomed me to the soil of liberty. We weighed anchor in order to make the roads and port of Baltimore: as we approached, the waters grew narrow; they were smooth and motionless; we appeared to be ascending a lazy stream lined with avenues. Baltimore presented itself to us as though at the further end of a lake. Opposite the town rose a wooded hill, at the foot of which they were commencing to build. We moored alongside the quay. I slept on board and did not go on shore till the next day. I went to stay at the inn with my luggage; the seminarists retired to the establishment prepared for them, whence they have since dispersed over America. What became of François Tulloch? The following letter was handed to me in London on the 12th of April 1822: