At four o'clock, P. M. on the 8th of December, I embarked on board the steam-boat Chancellor Livingstone, and in a few minutes the vessel was under weigh. Her course lay up the East River, and along the channel which divides Long Island from the mainland. I had heard much of a certain dangerous strait, called Hell Gate, formed by the projection of huge masses of rock, which obstruct the passage of the river, and diverting the natural course of the current, send its waters spinning round in formidable eddies and whirlpools. At high water—as it happened to be when we passed it—this said portal had no very frightful aspect. The stream was rapid, to be sure, but a double engine of ninety Lorse power was more than a match for it; and the Chancellor, in spite of its terrors, held on his course rejoicing, with little apparent diminution of velocity. Vessels, however, have been wrecked here, and a canal is spoken of, by which its dangers may be avoided.

The accommodations on board were such, as to leave the most querulous traveller no excuse for grumbling. The cabin, to be sure, with two huge red-hot stoves in it, was of a temperature which a salamander must have admired exceedingly, but the atmosphere, composed of the discarded breath of about an hundred passengers, still retained a sufficient portion of oxygen to support life.