He is fixed to the little Town; cannot be absent any night, without leave from the Commandant; which, however, and the various similar restrictions, are more formal than real.

An amiable Crown-Prince, no soul in Custrin but would run by night or by day to serve him.

He drives and rides about, in that green peaty country, on Domain business, on visits, on permissible amusement, pretty much at his own modest discretion.

A green flat region, made of peat and sand; human industry needing to be always busy on it: raised causeways with incessant bridges, black sedgy ditch on this hand and that; many meres, muddy pools, stagnant or flowing waters everywhere; big muddy Oder, of yellowish-drab color, coming from the south, big black Warta (Warthe) from the Polish fens in the east, the black and yellow refusing to mingle for some miles.

Nothing of the picturesque in this country; but a good deal of the useful, of the improvable by economic science; and more of fine productions in it, too, of the floral, and still more interesting sorts, than you would suspect at first sight.