We left Basle for Strasburg, at eight o’clock in the morning of the 3rd of August, and entered France at the little town of St. Louis, where our baggage underwent the strictest examination which we had yet experienced, in consequence of the extensive illicit introduction of Swiss manufactures, and particularly cambrics, into France. A merchant, who was in our company, informed us, that when once travelling in a carriage of his own, the officers threatened to break it to pieces, unless he declared in what part the illicit goods, which they were convinced he had with him, were concealed, stating that they had information of its having been constructed for that express purpose; they were only prevented from putting their threats into execution, by his declaring, that as it contained nothing contraband, he would certainly compel them to make good the damage. We dined at Mulhausen, famous for its fine printed cambrics, silks, and calicoes, and where we were amused, as well as benefited, by the economy of one of our French companions, who proposed, as it was an early hour for dinner, that we should take only a _petit dinér_, and which would be charged half-price: we assented to his proposal, and certainly had as good and full a dinner as we could wish, consisting of soup, entré, rôti, vegetables, a dessert, and _un demi-bottaile du vin_. We reached Colmar about seven o’clock, where we rested three hours, after which we travelled all night, arriving at Strasburg at four o’clock in the morning, and taking up our quarters at the Maison Rouge. After dinner we walked to a bridge of pontoons over the Rhine, about a league distant from the city, which we crossed, to the gates of the small town of Kehl; on our way back, we found the bar of a bridge over one of the tributary streams to the Rhine closed; our passage was thus obstructed, but we got over it without difficulty, an offence for which we only escaped arrest by pleading, as strangers, our ignorance of the regulation. On our arrival at Strasburg, also, we were but just in time to enter before the gates were shut; had we been a little later, we must inevitably have been excluded for the night. On the next day, Sunday, we visited the noble Gothic cathedral, which possesses the highest and finest steeple in the world, the summit being five hundred and seventy-four feet from the ground. This we ascended, and I had the temerity to mount some feet higher than my companions, which procured me a severe lecture; I had no small difficulty to convince them that the sense of touch, on which I depended, was less likely to deceive than the eye, when the dizzy height would make the “⸺brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong.”