CHAPTER XIII.
ON SECRET SERVICE If the world was lost through woman, she alone can save it .-- _Louis de Beaufort._ In the days of which I write, our civilization was, as I may say, so embryonic, that it is difficult for us now to realize the conditions which then obtained.

We had great men in those days, and great deeds were done; but to-day, as one reflects upon life as it then was, it seems almost impossible that they and their deeds could have existed in a time so crude and immature.
The means of travel in its best form was at that time at least curious.
We had several broken railway systems north and south, but there were not then more than five thousand miles of railway built in America.

All things considered, I felt lucky when we reached New York less than twenty-four hours out from Washington.
From New York northward to Montreal one's journey involved a choice of routes.

One might go up the Hudson River by steamer to Albany, and thence work up the Champlain Lake system, above which one might employ a short stretch of rails between St.John and La Prairie, on the banks of the St.Lawrence opposite Montreal.

Or, one might go from Albany west by rail as far as Syracuse, up the Mohawk Valley, and so to Oswego, where on Lake Ontario one might find steam or sailing craft.
Up the Hudson I took the crack steamer _Swallow_, the same which just one year later was sunk while trying to beat her own record of nine hours and two minutes from New York to Albany.