TO THE EDITOR OF THE PORTFOLIO.

Dear Sir,

Having understood that you consider that an account of the river Cam, in its course to the sea, would tend to the completeness of your work, I propose to supply the want to a certain extent; not however without diffidence, as I have little topographical, physiological, or statistical knowledge of the adjacent districts. My pretensions are founded on the circumstance of my having been concerned in a voyage down the river to Lynn in the spring of 18—, in weather which did full justice to the dreary nakedness of the soil.

Indeed, it is one of the most important refinements in the art of travelling to secure as far as possible a reciprocal adaptation of country and climate. I shall have the advantage in this little narrative of entering at least on untrodden ground; for it is not likely that any of your contributors should have condescended to the exercise of the rude and corporeal energies necessary for so unsedentary an occupation, though indeed in some sense it may be considered sedentary, as rowing. I might perhaps except the author of your account of boat races, who seems to have some acquaintance with the subject; but I may safely assume that his experience is confined to the polish and brilliancy of the art considered as an ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παρὸν, and not to its practical application as a mode of conveyance to a distance.