deed, throughout my tour so far. This place is very bright, with nice residential quarters. A peculiarity of Baltimore, however, is that there is no system of underground drainage; all the liquid runs in dirty streams through the streets in open gutters, while the solid sewage is carried away in carts. The system is not very agreeable to the senses, but I am not sure that it is not much more wholesome than our underground system.

I passed a Sunday here. This is a great church-going place. Very many nicely-dressed people about the streets. I notice very many well-got-up negroes and well-dressed negresses. I still cannot make out who all these well-dressed blacks are. They are not clerks or shopkeepers. I understand that there are very few negro clerks or dealers. They are not generally superior mechanics. All I can learn is that they have certain special occupations, and that a great many of them are waiters, keepers of eating-houses, and so on.

I had a visit from two gentlemen of the Democratic persuasion, Senator W- and Mr. M- a man who has served in important positions abroad. Their opinion is, that the military occupation of the South enabled the Carpet-baggers to play dreadful tricks before high heaven-to falsify the elections, and so return the candidates of the minority. Now things are, they say, on a fair and safe footing; the negroes are free and prosperous, and rights are secured to all-all that is necessary is to leave the Southern States alone. They say that after the war the blacks were helpless; their old masters did everything for them, and enabled them to cultivate the land upon the system of shares. The owners did so at a loss, but they were forced into it by circumstances, and before very long with much difficulty they succeeded in raising 3,000,000 bales of cotton, an amount which has since been very largely increased. The negroes felt that they could not live without this assistance. A friendly feeling sprang up again-in fact, it never was lost. During the first two years after the war the system was settling down very satisfactorily, and all would have gone well but for the new Constitution forced upon the South by the victors, and worked by the Carpet-baggers supported by the military. Now these abuses have been terminated, things are improving, and the negroes are becoming tolerably prosperous and well-off. They are not kept bound to their masters by debt; in fact, they get very little credit.

Generally the plant of the farms, the animals, the seed, and everything else, is supplied by the master. I am told that in Virginia and Maryland the estates are not very large; they are not what we should call great estates, but really large farms of from 600 to 1,500 arable acres. The great Valley of Virginia and some of the Western Virginian country is fine land.

The militia system of the United States is founded on the old English militia. There are some black companies, but not very many. In Maryland and all the States of the South townships scarcely exist at all. The organisation is by counties.

I took a walk with Mr. G-to the high land overlooking the harbour. The harbour here is in the channel of a small river. The Chesapeake is a short distance below. It is only a moderately good harbour, but then there are great facilities for getting to sea; there is not the long and difficult river which lies between Philadelphia and the sea.

Talking of the public colleges I asked if blacks were admitted. I was told that the question solves itself, for if blacks were admitted the whites would not come, and therefore it is that separate colleges have been provided for the blacks. I have not found anyone who at all takes in the idea of the races drawing nearer by intermarriage. All seem to regard the blacks as a servile and inferior race. Mr. M, whom I mentioned above, asserted that the laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut still make mixed marriages illegal; and others whom I have asked have not been able to deny the statement; but I have not verified it yet. Mr. G-lived three years in San Francisco. He says that the climate there is very superior to this. It is not nearly so hot in summer; there is a delicious breeze, and the thermometer seldom rises above 80°, while in winter snow is very rare. There is a good deal of rain in winter, but the Californian climate is very dry in summer. The great Wheat Valley lies between the coast range of hills and the great interior range. The fruit country is upon the slopes of the higher range. Inland the summer is very hot-almost as much so as in the Eastern cities. California, in fact, is an immense country. It is almost as long as the tract from Maine to Georgia on the eastern side. There are a good many rowdy people in California, but society there is not nearly so bad as it is sometimes represented. In San Francisco there is pleasant society, and a great many people who go to church and are quite civilised Christians.

The last evening I spent at Baltimore I found a very lively and agreeable party at Mr. R's house; the people rather American in their style, but very pleasant for all that.

I have picked up here a good many ideas and opinions as regards the Southern States. It remains to be seen how far I

shall verify them when I get there.

WASHINGTON.

Next morning I started for Washington-a little more than an hour's run from Baltimore. I hope to come back to Washington at the time that Congress meets; meantime I have only gone there for two or three days on my way South. At the Baltimore station (or depôt, as the Americans always call it) I found that the President and Mrs. Hayes were passengers by the same train. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to them, and travelled with them to Washington, thus having the opportunity of a good deal of talk with the President. He travelled without any show, like any other passenger, but an ordinary passenger-carriage was reserved for him and his party, and a little attention was paid to them by the railway officials. There was no crowd and no demonstration. Whatever may be said of the President's political character, I think that all who come in contact with him are agreed that he is what we should recognise in England as a gentleman, and that his wife is very much a lady. Socially they are certainly exceedingly well fitted to fill the position in which they are placed. I have heard the President spoken of as politically weak, but I am inclined to think that this opinion comes more from the members of his own party, who disapprove his measures of compromise, than from anyone else. It is not for me to express an opinion on this subject, and I should not like to retail all he said; but this I will say, that I have not met in America a man more pleasant to talk to.

The Baltimore papers contained accounts of his Southern policy, said to have been obtained from him in interviews, and I ventured to ask whether these accounts are authentic. He said that for the most part the statements to which I alluded were true enough in one way, but that the accounts of alleged interviews were not true. The newspaper people interview those who have come out from the President, pick up something, put into his mouth what they think he may probably

have said, and so make up their stories. Ile was reported to have said that until quite recently there had been, under the present régime, very little violence and outrage in the South; and I could not help calling his attention to some very serious outrages which had been reported within the last week or two. He says that my experience in that respect has been exceptionally unfortunate: this is election-time, and the most is made of what occurs.

The President takes a very favourable view of the position and prospects of the negro. He thinks the present race of negroes are not equal to white men; but then, according to his views, the qualities of mankind are very much a matter of climate. Whether white or black, he thinks men are inferior in hot climates. The American blacks have not yet had time to develop the higher human qualities nor to acquire much land, but he hopes they will. As showing how improvable they are, he tells a story of a number of blacks who, in the last century, followed the soldiers of the Revolutionary War, when the latter got grants in Ohio, which is the President's own State. Eventually Ohio was declared to be free territory, and these negroes settled down as free men-they and their descendants have become farmers, and good ones-they are at this day liked and respected by their neighbours, and are in every way good and prosperous citizens. He hopes that the Southern blacks will do likewise in the course of two or three generations. As regards the misconduct and outrages sometimes attributed to blacks, he says that their character cannot be so bad as some would now paint it; and as proof of that he points to the fact that during the war the Southern whites left their families and their property, and everything that was dear to them, in charge of and at the mercy of the blacks. Yet these blacks never rose against their masters' families, and, as a rule, never did any harm whatever, in spite of all the opportunities they had during a protracted war. I have since. heard this statement repeated in the Southern States-sometimes, no doubt, with a view to showing how good the masters had been. But at any rate there seems to be no doubt of the fact that the blacks, generally speaking, never did rise for plunder and outrage till they were raised by the actual presence of the Northern armies. This reminds me of what I was told by Mr. Mat Baltimore, when I appealed to his experience to explain why the negroes of the United States had

settled down so easily to labour, while we had so much trouble in Jamaica and elsewhere. He said that the United States negroes are long domesticated, tamed, civilised, trained to regular work, and no longer savages from Africa. Some of the West Indian negroes are much more savage and uncivilised and, he believes, more difficult to manage. At some work at the Isthmus of Panama, where different classes of blacks were working together, the Jamaica blacks were notoriously troublesome. Also he says that the situation is vastly different in a country where, after all, the blacks are in the minority. There they learn to behave well; but their conduct may be very dif ferent when they are in the great majority, with comparatively few white men. It will be remembered that Mr. M is a Southerner; and my subsequent experience of parts of the South where the negro population is very greatly in the majority hardly bore out this view.

A gentleman who travelled with us remarked that there is a curious clashing between the United States laws and the laws of the particular States, especially in South Carolina, where there has been a riotous interference with the United States laws. United States officers have arrested the ringleaders, upon which the local authorities have arrested the Republican leaders, on accusation of offences against the laws of the State. There is, he says, a good deal of friction, not only on account of the difficulty of executing the electoral laws in the South, but also on account of the internal revenue laws; and the difficulty is increased for this reason, that, owing to protection and bad trade, the customs revenue has been very much reduced, and the United States Treasury is more and more driven to depend upon the internal revenues.

Judge A gives almost as bad an account of the Carpetbaggers as the democrats do. After the war, he says, all the Union soldiers who had property, or homes, or sweethearts went home; the bad ones, who had none of these ties, remained and undertook the government of the country. It really was necessary to take the Southern States out of such hands.

I asked the President as to the extent to which the white people of the Northern States had suffered during the late bad times from want of work, remarking that I had not seen so many signs of distress as I had expected. He said that things are better now that people thrown out of work have been