As we left the vessel we were honoured with a general huzza, or in the English phrase with three cheers, echoed from the German sailors of our ship.  This nautical style of bidding their friends farewell our Germans have learned from the English.  The cliff where we landed was white and chalky, and as the distance was not great, nor other means of conveyance at hand, we resolved to go on foot to Dartford:  immediately on landing we had a pretty steep hill to climb, and that gained, we arrived at the first English village, where an uncommon neatness in the structure of the houses, which in general are built with red bricks and flat roofs, struck me with a pleasing surprise, especially when I compared them with the long, rambling, inconvenient, and singularly mean cottages of our peasants.  We now continued our way through the different villages, each furnished with his staff, and thus exhibited no remote resemblance of a caravan.  Some few people who met us seemed to stare at us, struck, perhaps, by the singularity of our dress, or the peculiarity of our manner of travelling.  On our route we passed a wood where a troop of gipsies had taken up their abode around a fire under a tree.  The country, as we continued to advance, became more and more beautiful.  Naturally, perhaps, the earth is everywhere pretty much alike, but how different is it rendered by art!  How different is that on which I now tread from ours, and every other spot I have ever seen.  The soil is rich even to exuberance, the verdure of the trees and hedges, in short the whole of this paradisaical region is without a parallel!  The roads too are incomparable; I am astonished how they have got them so firm and solid; every step I took I felt, and was conscious it was English ground on which I trod.

We breakfasted at Dartford.  Here, for the first time, I saw an English soldier, in his red uniform, his hair cut short and combed back on his forehead, so as to afford a full view of his fine, broad, manly face.  Here too I first saw (what I deemed a true English fight) in the street, two boys boxing.

Our little party now separated, and got into two post-chaises, each of which hold three persons, though it must be owned three cannot sit quite so commodiously in these chaises as two:  the hire of a post-chaise is a shilling for every English mile.  They may be compared to our extra posts, because they are to be had at all times.  But these carriages are very neat and lightly built, so that you hardly perceive their motion as they roll along these firm smooth roads; they have windows in front, and on both sides.  The horses are generally good, and the postillions particularly smart and active, and always ride on a full trot.  The one we had wore his hair cut short, a round hat, and a brown jacket of tolerable fine cloth, with a nosegay in his bosom.  Now and then, when he drove very hard, he looked round, and with a smile seemed to solicit our approbation.  A thousand charming spots, and beautiful landscapes, on which my eye would long have dwelt with rapture, were now rapidly passed with the speed of an arrow.