The people at the American farm houses will cheerfully lie three in a bed, rather than suffer a stranger to go away who comes to seek for a lodging. As all these houses, however, which we had visited, were crowded with inhabitants, we felt no great inclination to ask for accommodation at any of them, but determined to sleep on board our little vessel. We accordingly moored her at a convenient part of the shore, and each of us having wrapped himself up in a blanket, which we had been warned to provide on leaving New York, we laid ourselves down to sleep. The boat was decked two thirds of her length forward, and had a commodious hold; we gave the preference, however, because more airy, to the cabin or after part, fitted up with benches, and covered with a wooden awning, under which a man could just sit upright, provided he was not very tall. The benches, which went lengthwise, accommodated two of us; and the third was obliged to put up with the cabin floor; but a blanket and a bare board, out of the way of musquitoes, were luxuries after our accommodations at Skenesborough; our ears were not assailed by the noise even of a single one the whole night, and we enjoyed sounder repose than we had done for many nights preceding. The wind remained nearly in the same point the next morning, but the lake being wider, we were enabled to proceed faster. We stopped at one house to breakfast, and at another to dine. At neither of these, although they bore the name of taverns, were we able to procure much more than at the houses where we had stopped the preceding evening. At the first we got a little milk, and about two pounds of bread, absolutely the whole of what was in the house; and at the second, a few eggs, and some cold salted fat pork; but not a morsel of bread was to be had. The wretched appearance also of this last habitation was very striking; it consisted of a wooden frame, merely with a few boards nailed against it, the crevices between which were the only apertures for the admission of light, except the door; and the roof was so leaky, that we were sprinkled with the rain even as we sat at the fire side. That people can live in such a manner, who have the necessaries and conveniencies of life within their reach, as much as any others in the world, is really most astonishing! It is, however, to be accounted for, by that desire of making money, which is the predominant feature in the character of the Americans in general, and leads the petty farmer in particular to suffer numberless inconveniencies, when he can gain by so doing. If he can sell the produce of his land to advantage, he keeps as small a part of it as possible for himself, and lives the whole year round upon salt provisions, bad bread, and the fish he can catch in the rivers or lakes in the neighbourhood; if he has built a comfortable house for himself, he readily quits it, as soon as finished, for money, and goes to live in a mere hovel in the woods till he gets time to build