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more elegant construction. It appears strange to see the manners and customs of the people, and the face of the country: yet my mind is mercifully preserved in great quietude, and every place looks and feels like a temporary home. Dined at a public house in Schenectady, where we had the pleasure of General Schuyler's company. After dinner, we went on board a batteau, accompanied by seven others, load-ed with our baggage and stores, and embarked on the Mohawk river, in the presence of more than one hundred spectators. Two of our boats were manned with six men each, the other six boats with three men each. We proceeded about four miles, and stopped at a house, where the mother and three children were entirely insane. The three children never learned to speak, being idiots — the mother went distracted, and was confined in chains. The several circumstances attending this distressed fami-ly, deeply affected my mind, and caused me secretly to acknowledge, that I was not thankful enough for the manifold favours and blessings, mercifully dis-pensed to me. The bed of the Mohawk river I suppose to be about two hundred yards across, and averaging three feet deep; some places shoal and rapid, where the poor boatmen had very hard work to make headway against the current. The river winds across a val-ley about half a mile wide; alternately washing the southern and northern hills. The bottoms in the bends, and on the banks of the river, are rich black sand, exceeding fertile, and tolerably improved, pro-ducing wheat, Indian corn, peas, flax, &;c in abun-dance. We had an agreeable prospect of a range of fine plantations, interspersed with an abundance of