has not been rebuilt. The town, though still showing a good many blanks, has been rebuilt in a wonderful way, and is undoubtedly a very fine one, but rather dirty and smokynot clean, like the Eastern cities, where they burn anthracite coal. The whole country about is a dead level. The town is laid out on, I think, rather too great a scale; the distances are very great. Outside each quarter is a great park. I' went to the Grand Pacific Hotel-not the largest, but it seems very good and well situated, and I was comfortable there. I made the acquaintance of Mr. A—, the President of the Illinois Central Railway, who gave me much assistance; and I found one or two friends whom I had before met on my travels, and who were very kind to me. I spent the day in thoroughly doing the town. I went to one of the great pigkilling establishments. It certainly was a wonderful sight. They kill and dispose of 8,000 pigs per diem. It takes three or four days to convert the pigs into bacon, but they are really made into sausages in the course of an hour. The bacon is put into railway cars in layers, without any further packing, and so sent to the Eastern States. I drove round the parks, which are not quite complete, and may be called the parks of the future; but they are very well and handsomely laid out. There is a pleasant villa suburb called Hyde Park. Most of the Western cities have a 'Hyde Park.' Here also there was an exhibition going on, which I went to see. American-made goods seemed to preponderate, the agricultural machinery, as usual, very prominent. I went to see one of the great elevators by which grain is raised by machinery, stored, and shipped. It must be understood that the elevator in America is not a mere machine for transferring the grain from one conveyance to another, but is, in fact, a great warehouse, where grain is stored sometimes for months, especially on the great lakes, where, owing to the suspension of traffic in the winter, it must often be kept for a considerable period in store. The system seems to be one under which a man does not necessarily receive back his own grain, but only a like quantity of grain of the same grade. I was not quite able to understand the nature of the interference exercised, but I found that at Chicago, and I believe at most American commercial centres, the produce brought to market is examined by official inspectors, who class the grain, and apparently nothing is allowed to be sold without being officially classed.

I met at Chicago and had much talk with Judge F— of Tennessee, a gentleman who has had great experience in the Southern States; and also another gentleman, a Chicago lawyer, connected with the railway, a very clear-headed man. He told me that in all the States except Louisiana the law is based upon the English law. The Illinois Legislature meets biennially. The State Constitutions are generally revised by a Convention-say about once in every twenty years on the average, but there is no fixed time. Each State has its own civil and criminal law, and the State Judges dispose of all cases except offences against the United States revenue laws, which are tried by the United States Judges. After the war there was a general bankruptcy law throughout the whole of the United States, but it has now expired, and has not been renewed. There is a local insolvency law in some States, but not in all. In all States there seems to be a regular system of public prosecution-a prosecuting attorney is always to be found, corresponding to our Scotch Procurator Fiscals.

Judge F being a Southerner, takes a somewhat Southern view of things. He thinks the blacks will last for a time, but they cannot take care of themselves, and will die out in the end. Whether by nature or want of education, they seem to have a lower order of intelligence, and do not do well work requiring a fine hand, care, or thought; he believes they do not succeed in factories. They have a few farms of their own, but very few. He admits, however, that they are the most good-natured of mankind, and do very well under white superintendence. Most of the cotton is raised by negroes under a system of cultivation upon sharesthat is, the crops are divided between the proprietor and the negro who does the work, the negroes being well looked after. The larger estates in the South are now broken up into smaller farms, and more carefully worked than they used to be.

I went to see a great dry goods store. Dry goods are cloths and textile fabrics of all sorts, and, I believe, a good many other things besides; but I cannot exactly define the term. At all events dry goods are not groceries nor ironmongery. In this Great Central Chicago Store they say that half or perhaps more of the goods are of American make. Of the remainder, perhaps, one-third are English, and the rest French and German, or from other foreign countries.

Cotton goods they declare to be as cheap as in Manchester; and they have many varieties to suit American taste, but woollens are excessively_dear. Woollen clothes cost fully double what they do in England; ladies' silks are also very dear. Woollen goods are now manufactured in almost every State in America. The Americans evidently are pushing hard to come up to us in that trade.

From Chicago I took the night train through Illinois to St. Louis. This time we had the Pullman cars, which seemed cleaner and better than the Wagner's, in which I had before travelled. In the morning the train was detained for a time at Decatur. I had time to take a walk and look about the place on a charming morning, and I was much pleased with this Illinois country place. It seemed to be a kind of cross between town and country-large streets, laid out at right angles, and lined with trees in the usual pleasant manner; nice houses scattered about, with plenty of room. Although there is little natural wood in Illinois the trees when planted grow luxuriantly. The soil seemed a rich black soil; there is nothing like hills, but decided undulations. I now quite understand the rolling land we hear so much of. There was beautiful grass and clover in many of the fields, and plenty of stock of all kinds. Many apple-orchards were planted, but they do not seem to thrive here as they do in the country further north. The wind, I believe, is too much for them. There was good coffee and refreshment at the station. There seems to be generally some sort of hotel at these country stations. At last we started, and had daylight for the run onwards to St. Louis. I was much interested and pleased with the country. Much of it is rolling, and more or less raised. There were occasionally what looked like small hillocks, but nothing amounting to hills. The country through which I travelled all consisted of what once was prairie, but is now cultivated and enclosed. There are only a few belts of natural wood in broken ground near streams and ravines, especially as we approached the Mississippi. All the land seemed well cultivated. The great crop is Indian corn. is now standing on the ground ripe. In some of the barer parts the crops seemed of poor growth and the weeds very strong; but other parts were much better cultivated, and the crops there seemed strong and good. We passed a good many wheat-fields, the autumn wheat already up, and the fields

It

clean and well cultivated. I saw no root-crops; and throughout most of the country at this season there is little appearance of plentiful grass-the fields seemed pretty bare-but a great deal of hay was stacked. We passed many villages and small towns. The people at some of these places seemed primitive enough. After running through a considerable belt of wood we came to the Mississippi, with the city of St. Louis on the opposite side, and crossed by the great bridge, a very fine structure.

I went to the Lindell Hotel, a fine and large one. My first day at St. Louis was a Sunday, and I noticed there that, although the people seemed very religious and church-going, they were somewhat Continental in their views of Sunday. Here and at other places I saw the eternal American game of base-ball being played on Sunday. There was a boat-race; and the Exhibition grounds (here, as everywhere, an agricultural exhibition was going on) were very full of people, the Sunday notwithstanding. All over America shops are closed on Sunday, as with us; but they seem to have no shutters to the windows, so that they have not the same closed appearance. I stayed at St. Louis long enough to have a good look about the town. There seemed to be many fine buildings, but I should say it is hardly so pretentious as Chicago. However, it is almost as large, with very long streets running out into the country, and a large park.

I noticed in the St. Louis papers that in this State of Missouri parties are so divided that the negro vote seeins to be of consequence. The question of mixed or separate schools. seems to be an important one here, and the advocates of mixed schools hope to secure the votes of the blacks. I went down to have a good look at the Mississippi, that great river of America, and I was certainly disappointed. After having seen other great rivers I was not particularly struck with this one. It may be larger than the others, but the size is not palpable; the breadth is not excessive, and there is no appearance of a very strong current. According to the register it is now seven feet above low-water level, which, I suppose, is rather low. The Mississippi and Missouri join a few miles above this. The water looks muddy. It is a curious thing that there seem to be no good fish in the Mississippi. There are no river-fish in the hotel bills; those that they have come over from the great lakes or from the sea. I asked about it,

and they said only a few inferior fish, called cat-fish, are caught in the Mississippi.

There are many steamers here, but none equal to the great inland steamers at New York. I took two trips of some miles each into the suburbs. On one route there was a park and a great many good villas, and on the other there. were endless streets of poor men's houses. They seemed good of their kind. The country rises in a rolling way; but there are no hills or signs of the mountains yet. I noticed that the driver of the tram in which I travelled was a Frenchman, and the conductor an Irishman. I am told that there are a good many French here, but there seem to be more German signboards, notices, &c. I saw very little peculiarly American about the dress and appearance of the people, and did not even notice very much in their voices. In crowded tram-cars scarcely anyone said anything to anybody, and there was no roughness. Wideawakes are certainly more common than in England; chimney-pot hats are comparatively rare. In the Exhibition I saw some very fine fat cattle. In the hotel there was a board with the various churches grouped under denominations. Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian are the most numerous. Besides Presbyterian there are also a few 'United Presbyterian' churches. One of the largest denominations struck me, being called simply 'Christians.' On inquiry I was told that this is a large persuasion throughout a great part of the States. They are called Christians' or 'Campbellites,' being founded by a certain Bishop Campbell; they are said to have branched off from the Baptists.

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After doing St. Louis I started for Kansas. The first part of the country is much like that on the other side of the river, but becomes more rolling as we go on. On all the lands formerly prairie a good deal of tree-planting has been done, and trees are now nowhere rare; but they are not yet available for timber. The timber is chiefly imported from the lakes into Illinois and the neighbouring country. Hedges are becoming very common as fences. Getting on towards Kansas the country rolls more and more, and a good deal of stone begins to crop up. I was surprised to see the extent of cultivation. There is still nothing that can be called a real open prairie, though there are some grazing tracts. The grass is now not very green; but here also im