Having passed a week at Niagara, and seen the Falls under every aspect, in cloud and sunshine, in storm and calm, by star and moonlight, I took my departure. About four miles below is a very remarkable whirlpool, which I visited on my way to Fort George, This whirlpool is caused by the protrusion of a bed of rock across the rectilinear course of the river. The stream comes down with great impetuosity, and, when driven back by this obstacle, the current whirls round the basin with prodigious violence, and at length escapes in a direction nearly at right angles with its former course. The water has the appearance of molten lead, and the people in the neighbourhood declare that from the eddies of this vortex nothing living can escape. Even boats have been absorbed by them, and, when this happens, there is no possibility of help from the shore. The boat upsets, and the men are drowned; or if not, the boat is kept whirling round with the stream for perhaps a fortnight together, and the men are starved. Such were stated to be the horns of the dilemma.

Fort George is a military station at the mouth of the river, and the works, originally built of turf, have been suffered to go to decay. It is better it should be so, for it would be easy at any time to throw up others, and all immediate expense is avoided. On the opposite side is the American Fort Niagara, which, though built of stone, does not present an aspect much more formidable than its British rival.

Dear Whitmore,

I inscribe these volumes to you. As a politician, your course has ever been straightforward and consistent, and I know no one who brings to the discharge of his public duties, a mind less biassed by prejudice, or more philosophically solicitous for the attainment of truth. Neither mingling in the asperities of party conflict, nor descending to those arts by which temporary popularity is often purchased at the expense of permanent contempt, you have been wisely content to rest your claims to the gratitude of your country, on a zealous, enlightened, and unobtrusive devotion to her best interests.

Had I been conscious, in what I have written of the United States, of being influenced by any motive incompatible with perfect fairness of purpose, you are perhaps the last person to whose judgment I should venture an appeal. By no one will the arguments I have advanced be more rigidly examined, and the grist of truth more carefully winnowed from the chaff of sophistry and declamation. For this reason, and in testimony of sincere esteem, I now publicly connect your name with the present work. You will at least find in it the conclusions of an independent observer; formed after much deliberation, and offered to the world with that confidence in their justice, which becomes a writer, who, through the medium of the press, pretends to influence the opinions of others.

Having moved, since my arrival, in a tolerably wide circle, I now feel qualified to offer some observations on the state of society in New York. The houses of the better order of citizens, are generally of brick, sometimes faced with stone or marble, and in the allotment of the interior very similar to tenements of the same class in England. The dining and drawing-rooms are uniformly on the ground floor, and communicate by folding doors, which, when dinner is announced, are thrown open for the transit of the company. The former of these apartments, so far as my observation has carried me, differs nothing in appearance from an English one. But the drawing-rooms in New York certainly strike me as being a good deal more primitive in their appliances than those of the more opulent classes in the old country. Furniture in the United States is apparently not one of those articles in which wealth takes pride in displaying its superiority. Every thing is comfortable, but every thing is plain. Here are no buhl tables, nor or-molu clocks, nor gigantic mirrors, nor cabinets of Japan, nor draperies of silk or velvet; and one certainly does miss those thousand elegancies, with which the taste of British ladies delights in adorning their apartments. In short, the appearance of an American mansion is decidedly republican. No want remains unsupplied, while nothing is done for the gratification of a taste for expensive luxury.