He traversed Georgia, the Carolinas, ranged along the base of the mountains of Virginia,--and for three months and more, he enjoyed one perpetual, one unvarying, ever-coming Spring,--that most delicious season of the year,--till, by the middle of June, he found himself in the fogs of the Passamaquoddy, where tardy summer was even then hesitating whether it was time to come. And yet he had not been off the soil of his own country! The flag that he saw on the summit of the fortress, on the lakes near New Orleans, was the like of that which floated from the staff on the hills of Fort Sullivan, in the easternmost extremity of Maine;--and the morning gun that startled his slumbers, among the rocky battlements that defy the wild tides of the Bay of Fundy, was not answered till many minutes after, on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The swamps, the embankments, the cane-brakes of the Father of Waters, on whose muddy banks the croaking alligator displayed his ponderous jaws,--the cotton-fields, the rice-grounds of the low southern country,--and the vast fields of wheat and corn in the regions of the mountains, were far, far behind him:--and he was now, in a Hyperborean land--where nature wore a rough and surly aspect, and a cold soil and a cold clime, drove man to launch his bark upon the ocean, to dare wind and wave, and to seek from the deep, in fisheries, and from freights, the treasures his own home will not give him. Indeed, such a journey as this, in one's own country, to an inquisitive mind, is worth all 'the tours of Europe.' If a young American, then, wishes to feel the full importance of an American Congress, let him make such a journey. Let him stand on the levee at New Orleans and count the number and the tiers of American vessels that there lie, four, five and six thick, on its long embankment. Let him hear the puff, puff, puff, of the high-pressure steam-boats, that come sweeping in almost every hour, perhaps from a port two thousand miles off,--from the then frozen winter of the North, to the full burning summer of the South,--all inland navigation,--fleets of them under his eye,--splendid boats, too, many of them, as the world can show,--with elegant rooms, neat berths, spacious saloons, and a costly piano, it may be,--so that travellers of both sexes can dance or sing their way to Louisville, as if they were on a party of pleasure. Let him survey all these, as they come in with products from the Red River, twelve hundred miles in one direction, or from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, two thousand miles in another direction, from the western tributaries of the vast Mississippi, the thickets of the Arkansas, or White River,--from the muddy, far-reaching Missouri, and its hundreds of branches:--and then in the east, from the Illinois, the Ohio, and its numerous tributaries--such as the Tennessee, the Cumberland, or the meanest of which, such as the Sandy River, on the borders of Kentucky--that will in a freshet fret and