the English phrase with three cheers, echoed from the German sailors
of our ship. This nautical style of bidding their friends farewell
our Germans have learned from the English. The cliff where we
landed was white and chalky, and as the distance was not great, nor
other means of conveyance at hand, we resolved to go on foot to
Dartford: immediately on landing we had a pretty steep hill to
climb, and that gained, we arrived at the first English village,
where an uncommon neatness in the structure of the houses, which in
general are built with red bricks and flat roofs, struck me with a
pleasing surprise, especially when I compared them with the long,
rambling, inconvenient, and singularly mean cottages of our
peasants. We now continued our way through the different villages,
each furnished with his staff, and thus exhibited no remote
resemblance of a caravan. Some few people who met us seemed to
stare at us, struck, perhaps, by the singularity of our dress, or
the peculiarity of our manner of travelling. On our route we passed
a wood where a troop of gipsies had taken up their abode around a
fire under a tree. The country, as we continued to advance, became
more and more beautiful. Naturally, perhaps, the earth is
everywhere pretty much alike, but how different is it rendered by
art! How different is that on which I now tread from ours, and
every other spot I have ever seen. The soil is rich even to
exuberance, the verdure of the trees and hedges, in short the whole
of this paradisaical region is without a parallel! The roads too
are incomparable; I am astonished how they have got them so firm and
solid; every step I took I felt, and was conscious it was English
ground on which I trod.

We breakfasted at Dartford. Here, for the first time, I saw an
English soldier, in his red uniform, his hair cut short and combed