AMERICA,

HISTORICAL, STATISTIC, AND DESCRIPTIVE.

BY

J. S. BUCKINGHAM, ESQ.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

FISHER, SON, & CO.

NEWGATE ST. LONDON; RUE ST. HONORÉ, PARIS.

DEDICATION.

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT.

SIR,

LONDON, May 1, 1841.

WHEN I took the liberty to transmit to Your Royal Highness, the announcement of my proposed Work on America, You did me the honour to assure me, that "it would afford You much pleasure to give it Your full sanction and patronage." Your Royal Highness further condescended to observe, that "the feelings of good-will towards the American people, under which this Work was undertaken, could not fail at the present moment of producing a desirable effect."

While I am deeply sensible of this act of kindness on the part of Your Royal Highness toward myself personally-I feel yet more strongly the value and importance, from their future influence on the public weal, of the generous sentiments to which Your Royal Highness has been pleased to give expres

A sense of gratitude on my own part, and a still higher sentiment of duty towards the people of England and America, thus encourage me to make known to both, the noble and enlightened views with which Your Royal Highness desires to promote whatever can strengthen the friendly relations between their respective countries.

I cannot, therefore, commit my humble labours to the press, under more appropriate or more distinguished auspices than those of Your Royal Highness, to whom I cheerfully dedicate these Volumes; in the confident hope that they will awaken in other minds, the same friendly and benevolent aspirations after

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peace on earth and good-will to man,” which beamed so generously and spontaneously from Your own.

Your Royal Highness cannot be indifferent to international friendships, as the illustrious Consort of a Queen whose broad realm embraces such extended possessions, that the sun never ceases to shine on some portion or other of her vast dominions,-its evening rays still lingering amid the shrines and domes that stud the banks of the mighty Ganges-while its morning beams are just beginning to gild the spires and turrets scattered along the margin of the still more magnificent St. Lawrence.