AUDUBON—THE HUNTER-NATURALIST. 97 
~-that singular city, that looks as if it had been built over 
the very gates of Acheron. Soon as I made my appearance 
in the raw, foggy air, upon the wharf, early as it was, I was 
surrounded by scores of “strikers” and agents of the different 
hotels and transportation lines. 
Amidst the yells and deafening clamors of contending 
claims on every side, I permitted myself to be bodily ravished 
into a coach, and hurried off, bag and baggage, for—the word 
of the Darky “Striker” being accepted—‘“the most splen- 
_ diferous hotel in the city!” As it happened to be the one I 
knew, and had selected beforehand, I was content to take his 
definition of its superlative excellence. 
Before I reached my destination, the coach was hailed from 
a street corner, and a fellow, muffled in a pilot cloth, sprang 
in and took a seat beside me. To my no little astonishment, 
he seemed to take the most sudden and peculiar interest in 
me, and, greatly to the exaltation of my inward consciousness 
of great deserts, plied me with a series of the sharpest ques- 
tionings as to my whereabouts “when I was at home’—my 
destination, and above all, my route—with the roundest and 
most voluble protestations as to the affectionate interest he felt 
in seeing that all travelers, especially such looking ones as I 
was, were properly warned of the complicated impositions and 
knaveries practised habitually upon them, by the many trans- 
portation lines in this wicked city ; and to wind up thig touch- 
ing exordium, he frankly assured me that the “Stage Route” 
across the mountains was the cheapest—the most safe—the 
“ most genteelest’’—and altogether the route he would recom- 
mend to such a gentleman as me! 
The milk of human kindness was somewhat stirred in my 
veins, responsive to this gratuitous exhibition of a broad phi- 
lanthropy—but as it happened that I had determined upon 
the “Canal Route,” I waived, with the most thankful acknowl- 
edgments, any present committal, and gratefully accepted the 
