Travels in the United States, etc.,: during 1849 and 1850./ By the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley.

TRAVELS IN AMERICA.
"Very much so, and with books the time passed very agreeably."
All this was as quietly discussed as if the passage had been
from Dover to Boulogne, and the length of the time of absence a
fortnight.
American ladies, perhaps, on the whole, do not travel about as
much as we do, but when they do set about it, the uttermost ends of
the earth seem scarcely to alarm them. The fact is, I think, that
foreign travel to American ladies is rather a different thing to what
it is with us. Living so close, comparatively speaking, to all the
most interesting places in the world-Italy, with its countless
associations and glories of art-Switzerland, with its crown of
mountains and enchanting scenery, and other classic lands-we
can so easily and so quickly indulge ourselves with these glorious
and interesting spectacles; but if our transatlantic sister wishes to
gaze on the time-honored monuments and transcendent works of
art of Old Imperial Rome, or the magical enchantments of Naples,
or the Arabian-Night-like glories of the Alhambra and Granada;
or to speed to that Mecca of the Americans-Paris; there rolls
the broad Atlantic, and she must prepare for the fatigues of a
regular sea voyage before she can hope to accomplish it. Thus
their ideas of foreign travel are necessarily mnore comprehensive, and,
perhaps more expansive than ours. Without doubt, after crossing
the Atlantic the Pacific becomes less formidable; but I need not
talk of foreign travel, when part of their own America-California
-is at such a mighty distance from them.
" Mrs. P, from China," I found to be a delightful person,
and I was excessively interested in many things she told me during a long conversation we had ill the evening. Some of her accounts of Chinese proceedings amused me greatly. Together with
other things, she told me that at Canton, among the crowded
population who live in boats, it was a regular custom, as soon as a
boy could crawl about on his hands and knees, to fasten carefully
around his head a sort of life-preserving apparatus, in case little
Master Chinaman should, when occasionally left to his own inventions, pop overboard, and the brother of the sun and moon lose a
valuable subject. But no such tender precautions are ever taken
with regard to the poor little Celestial misses. Their brows and
waists are left unbound by the guardian bladder, and if they become a morsel for the fishes, so much the better for the finny bon,vivant, and also for the affectionate parental non-barbarians! It
is not unlikely, if this is the case, that these poor little supernu
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