LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1854. PREFACE. THIS work is designed as a companion to "Traits of American Humour." The sketches it contains are confined, as expressed in the title-page, to the Byeways, Backwoods, and Prairies. The large cities and vast rivers and railroads of the United States are not only well known to all tourists, but to the reading public generally. Unfortunately travellers, on account of the facility, safety, and comfort of transit, confine themselves to the great public thoroughfares, whereby they add but little to the stock of information they previously possessed. The peculiarities of the people, their modes of thinking, living, and acting, are principally to be sought for in the rural districts, where |