!&04 IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 



busy generations,. whose toil was begun and carried on amid 

 want and sickness, and a struggle against ignorance and neglect 

 without, as well as a war of extirmination within; a war which 

 may be said to exist even to this day, for yet is the ever-growing 

 frontier from time to time awakened by the night whoop of the 

 savage, and the answering shot of a hardy pioneer. 



" Then come the recollections connected with the war of the 

 revolution — the noble declaration of independence, for truly 

 noble it was; no dark compact of a crew of ruffian conspirators, 

 but a generous bond, that tha: aggrieved country should be freed, 

 given by a band of citizen gentlemen, husbands, fathers, and 

 brothers, to the fulfilment of the which they pledged unto each 

 other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honour ; and 

 having placed their hands to this bold deed, they gave it to their 

 people and the world. 



" Their bond is cancelled, and they are dismissed beyond the 

 hearing of praise or censure; yet shall these, the names of their 

 country**; fathers, be read and blessed by ages yet to come, and 

 shall stand for ever, each a synonyme for patriot honour." 



RAIL-ROADS. 



"At the period of my first visit to the Schuylkill, the huge 

 piers of of a new bridge, projected by the Columbian Rail-Road 

 Company, were just appearing in different degrees above the 

 gentle river's surface. The smoke of the workmen's fires rising 

 from the wood above, and the numerous attendant barges moored 

 beneath the tall cliff, from which the road was to be thrown, 

 added no little to the effect. I have since seen this viaduct 

 completed, and have been whirled over it in the train of a loco- 

 motive; and, although it is a fine work, I cannot but think every 

 lover of the picturesque will mourn the violation of the solitude 

 so lately to be found here. 



" I could not refrain picturing to myself the light canoes of 

 the Delaware Indians, as, at no very remote period, they lay 

 rocking beneath the shelter of that very bluff where now were 

 moored a fleet of deep-laden barges ; indeed these ideas were 

 constantly forcing themselves, as it were, into my mind as I 

 wandered over the changeful face of this singular land, where 

 the fresh print of the moccasian is followed by the tread of the 

 engineer and his attendants, and the light trail of the red man 

 is effaced by the road of iron : hardly have the echoes ceased to 

 repeat through the woods the Indian's hunter-cry, before this is 



