Count Paolo Andreani began the journal of his 1790 trip at the northern tip of Manhattan Island. He proceeded to traverse a wooden bridge to reach the present-day Bronx, or, as he put it, “to enter the continent.” Travelers of Andreani’s day were acutely aware that the city of New York (then confined to the southern end of Manhattan) lay off the coast of North America, separate from the mainland.¹

Andreani’s understanding of geography suggests important differences between his universe—both physical and mental—and our own. He presents us with a long-lost rural world, and he shows it to...

King’s bridge forms the northern extremity of the island of N[ew]. York, connected to the continent by means of a wooden bridge which crosses a river, or more precisely a small sea channel that connects to the West with the river HUdson,^aand to the East with the river thus called.² In this location one observes that the flow of the water varies at every change of the tide, running toward the East when the tide rises in the River of the North,³ and vice versa when it is high in the River of the East. In this location there...

Shortly after returning to New York, Paolo Andreani traveled to Philadelphia, where he spent the winter of 1790–91. His reason for going to Philadelphia was the removal of the national capital to that city. Late in the winter, however, the open and cordial hospitality he had enjoyed in New York turned into indifference and even hostility in the City of Brotherly Love. This change was the result of two incidents that illuminate the honor-consciousness of the capital and the informal but influential role elite women played in politics there. These incidents also bore out the prevalence of what Virginia...