The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-18 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON THURSDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 18, 1860.

veying some 10 or 15 of these helpless creatures,
who have previously been. publicly sold at the
Court-house—sold from the very tribunal erected

to mete out justice between man and man. A few
years more and Missouri will scarcely have a slave
left in it, while politically it must shortly be de-
clared a free State. In the South, on the contrary,
the number of slaves increases yearly; there

are already over 6,000,000, and the number in the
course of some ten years more will probably be up-
wards of 7,500,000. It is not so much the increase of
slaves as the deterioration of the whites from the
intermixture of the races that is to be dreaded in the

future. Already there are thousands and thousands
of quadroons with all the ability of their white

masters, and all the fire and ardent temperament o

;heir tropical origin, yet as much slaves and chattels

as the darkest EthioPians. These are the slaves who
will become dangerous men hereafter, who are cer-

tain to be able and willing instruments for future

John Browns. When the Prince landed at St

Louis there was a mob of apparently the lowest o:

the population, who thrust their heads into the car-
riage, and hung upon it like bees, so that it was
not without considerable difficulty that it could be

got through the crowd to the Barnum House, one
of the finest hotels now in St. Louis. In the
evening there were rival serenades from really good
bands of music and from some execrable per-
formers on drums and fifes. Though very loudly
called for, however, his Royal Highness declined to
show himself, and lost nothing by his reserve, ex-
cept the opportunity of seeing more shabby hats
at one time than he is ever likely to have the
chance of seeing again. With the Americans the
Prince is certainly getting very popular. They
seem not to have been prepared for his being so
utterly unassuming, and for the graceful kindly
courtesy with which he acknowledges the least mark
of attention. On the day after his arrival at St.
Louis he visited the great cattle and agricultural
show of that town. There were some 60,000 people
in the grounds who received him with the utmost
enthusiasm, and whose preconceived notions of the
haughty tyranny of British aristocracy were sadly
upset by observing the strict kind politeness with
which he took off his hat and bowed in reply to
those who bowed to him. This was an amount of
condescension which the majority of the Americans
never thought he would be guilty of, and his
Royal Highness's courtesy won the good feeling
of the crowd in a few minutes. After the
fair the Royal party drove round the city,
visiting even the old French quartier, where with
customary gregariousness the descendants of the
early French settlers still dwell by themselves.
Though the general character of the country round
St. Louis is fiat and tame, still a good view may be
obtained from here over the city, with the broad
and now deep and quick stream of the Mississippi,
flowing grandly past till lost in the blue distance.
On the whole, however, there was very little to see
in this city, and the Prince quitted it early on the
morning of the 28th. The distance from St. Louis
to Cincinnati is rather over 300 miles—a twelve
hours' journey, which it was arranged the Royal
party should get through by starting at nine in the
morning, so as to reach here in time for a late dinner
or early supper, as they might choose. The road
from St. Louis at first winds through thick under-
wood and the massive growth of trees that fringe
the banks of the Mississippi—a wild tangled marshy
jungle, impressive even from its silent slimy ruins of
vegetation. Sometimes it crosses little brooks and
muddy streams, trickling down with mournful slow-
ness to the great Father of Waters, though scarce
seeming of themselves to have life enough even to
reflect the light of day, which seems to smear over
their current with a greasy brightness that is far
from pleasant in its general effect. Once the line
crosses a marsh on a round viaduct, and such a mi-
serable looking swamp as this I never saw. The
ground is dull, thick, and watery, with hardly
consistency enough to support the huge trees which
lean about in massive disarray—sear, yellow, and
weird-looking, with rent limbs peering starkly
through thin foilage, and long, dishevelled tresses of
foul weeds that had crawled there to rot and die
drooping round in rags. Here nature seemed sick,
squalid, and forlorn ; there was a faded poverty on
trees, on bush, on the land, and slimy water which
seemed to speak of the diseased and wasted forests
that the swamp was slowly killing. Now and then
a little Knoll 1,7%, 4,1,,../ebr, in wnien a
few small bushes grew, and seemed to strive
to keep their branches from the contaminat-
ing garbage gathering round, but these were
rare, and took nothing from the general aspect
of the flat, deadly monotony of this wild, rank
spot. It was a comfort when this was past, and the
train sped on to the prairie, with its fresh, clear
breeze always blowing, and its rich grass rippling
gently to the wind, and seeming to laugh and play
in the clear, bright sun. Upwards of 100 miles of
this prairie was crossed, and then the train came to
a dead stop, for a goods train had taken advantage
of the opportunity to get off the line some little dis-
tance ahead, and there was nothing for it but. to
wait till it could be got on again. The delay was
very annoying, but the Royal party took
.it very
quietly, and, as the car in which they travelled had
been amply provisioned in case of such a stop, they
were, on the whole, not badly off. It, however, made
a considerable difference in the time of their arrival
here, which happened at nearly 2 a.m. on the morn-
ing of the 29th, instead of at 9 o'clock the previous
evening.
The Burnet House, where his Royal Highness is
staying in this city, is a fine specimen of an Ameri-
can hotel—that is to say, a handsomer, larger, and
more imposing building externally than our Nation al
Gallery, and capable of accommodating four times
as many people as that obscure structure can con-
ceal pictures. Here the Prince has a set of apart-
ments reserved for himself and suite, and remains as
private as he can under the circumstances. It is
really a comfort to be rid of the State receptions of
Canada, where one was obliged to sleep nightly in
loyal hotels which illuminated every pane of glass
in the house, and where, as a matter of course, you
found your bedroom a perfect blaze of light from
80 or 100 sconces, or variegated lamps, and might
consider yourself fortunate if there was not a huge
transparency and gas star as well. Oh, those bed-
rooms, and the sleepless misery that one endured,
looking at the rows of blinking, twinkling lights,
where, of course, there were no curtains to the win-
dow, and one .ad to intrigue with caution into
bed, to avoid attracting too much notice from the
noisy, gaping crowd outside—where one woke
each minute as the lamps or candles went
slowly out, each one more offensively than the other,
and where, in the intervals of fitful dozing,
you were tormented with nightmares of Vaux-
hall, and of having been overcome and gone to
sleep in some brilliant grotto of " the Royal pro-
perty!" Once the woodwork of my windows actu-
ally caught light from the heat of these fervent dis-
plays. At London, Upper Canada, after a month
of such brilliant annoyance, when I had begun to
shudder at the very sight of a candle, I had a bed
made up for me at the post-office. It is a very fine
building, though never meant to do duty as a
sleeping apartment, inasmuch as my bed was fixed
in the corner of a hall not much smaller than that
at St. Martin's-le-Grand, with a little hedge of
screen and mailbags round it to prevent my
wandering from the place in the dark and losing my-
self utterly. It was not in human nature, how-
ever—certainly not in mine—to endure the blaze
of light which the huge bedroom presented that
evening, for as a Government establishment it was,
of course, in a regular glow inside and out. The
first glimpse of the flood of coloured lights which it
poured down the streets satisfied me of my chances
of sleeping there, as I had nothing for it but to
walk about for .hours, till the conflagration had
toned down sufficiently to make repose a possibility,
With such experience it may easily be conceived
how great is my relief to find that the American
hotels do not illuminate when the Prince stays at
them, and that I can consequently luxuriate in an
utter darkness of bedroom whenever I am so
inclined. There was an immense crowd under
the fine portico of the Burnet House yesterday
to see the Prince enter his carriage for a drive
round the city, and in point of struggling, crushing
disorder there was rather an unpleasant repetition
of what had occurred at the St. Louis landing. As
soon, however, as the carriage cleared the crowd it