130 LANDLORDS IN UNFREQUENTED PLACES. 



years before had learned he had a stomach a phrase 

 which those who are read in Dr Kitchener will feelingly 

 understand. I made a fashion of turning over the frag 

 ments with which I was served, and, with a potato and 

 a bit of bread, did as much in the eating way as gave 

 me an excuse for leaving the table. &quot; The man,&quot; how 

 ever, who was so ungraciously invited, paid for his 

 dinner, as he was no doubt expected to do, and, as soon 

 as the conductor was ready, started again on his journey. 

 One hears a good deal from American travellers of such 

 unpleasant hosts, but I have met with them only in a 

 very few places, and those chiefly where few passengers 

 travelled, and the landlords thought, or wished to make 

 you believe, that, besides taking your money, they 

 were doing you a favour by taking you in. Were more 

 travellers to take these routes, the profits derivable from 

 receiving them would become more palpable, and com 

 petition would beget civility. This implies, indeed, or 

 appears to imply, a want of innate civility among the 

 people at large ; but I doubt if that is a necessary con 

 clusion from the fact I have stated. It often happens 

 that those who, in out-of-the-way places, first open their 

 doors to receive strangers for hire, are not the choicest 

 and most generous specimens of the population among 

 which they live. They who afterwards take up the 

 business in a regular manner are a better class, and 

 know, besides, that civility is one of the most important 

 elements of a traveller s comfort in an English inn. 



Leaving De Bout s, our course lay more to the west, 

 and along the course of the river. In about half-a-mile 

 the conglomerate hills on either side retired, and formed 

 a wide valley of great beauty, with rich bottom-land, 

 rounded hill-tops covered with wood, a somewhat wind 

 ing river, and magnificent conglomerate cliffs at times 

 thrusting out their naked fronts from among the trees, 

 which clothed every spot where a root could fix. The 



