CHAPTER XIII. 



Leaving Boston for the South. Railway Stove. Fall of Snow. New Haven, 

 and Visit to Professor Silliman. New York. Improvements in the 

 City. Croton Waterworks. Fountains. Recent Conflagration. New 

 Churches. Trinity Church. News from Europe of Converts to Rome. 

 Reaction against Tractarians. Electric Telegraph, its Progress in 

 America. Morse and Wheatstone. 11,000 Schools in New York for 

 Secular Instruction. Absence of Smoke. Irish Voters. Nativism. 



Dec. 3. 1 845. HAVING resolved to devote the next six months 

 of my stay in America to a geological exploration of those parts 

 of the country which I had not yet visited, I left Boston just as 

 the cold weather was setting in, to spend the winter in the south. 

 The thermometer had fallen to 23 F., and on our way to the 

 cars we saw skaters on the ice in the common. Soon after we 

 started, heavy snow began to fall, but in spite of the storm we 

 were carried to Springfield, 100 miles, in five hours. We passed 

 a luggage train with twenty-two loaded cars, rolling past us in 

 the opposite direction, on 1 wheels, including those of the engine 

 and tender. In the English railways, the passengers often suffer 

 much from cold in winter. Here, the stove in the center of the 

 long omnibus is a great luxury, and I saw one traveler after an 

 other leave his seat, walk up to it and warm his feet on the fender. 

 As I was standing there, a gentleman gave me the President s 

 speech to read, which, by means of a railway express, had, for 

 the first time, been brought from Washington to Boston, 470 

 miles, in one day. It was read with interest, as all were 

 speculating on the probability of a war with England about 

 Oregon. While I was indulging my thoughts on the rapid 

 communication of intelligence by newspapers and the speed and 

 safety of railway traveling, a fellow-passenger interrupted my 

 pleasing reveries by telling me I was standing too near the iron 

 stove, which had scorched my clothes and burnt a hole in my 

 great coat, and immediately afterward I learnt at Springfield, that 



