The Inhabitants In General Are Passionately Fond Of Theatrical Entertainments, And Received Us With A Degree Of Kindness And Hospitality Which Claims Our Warmest Acknowledgments.

I spend my time here very agreeably.

The politeness, ease, and conviviality of the Annapolians form a strong and pleasing contrast to the behaviour of the stiff, gloomy and unsocial bigots I was lately surrounded with in the Jerseys. Next to Virginia, this state was the most famous for tobacco-plantations; but the people now find the culture of wheat more profitable, as well as less injurious to the soil. No plant impoverishes the earth so much by it's growth as tobacco; many plantations, owing to successive crops of this _weed_, are what is here called _worn out_; formerly, when their land was in this state, instead of endeavouring to bring it round by a few fallow years and manure, as in England, they immediately cleared a fresh tract. They now begin to use manure, and have discovered a very extraordinary kind; viz. antediluvian oyster-shells, large beds of which are found a few feet beneath the surface of the earth in several parts of the state[Footnote: See Bartram's Account of a similar Bed in Georgia, page 213.]: these being laid on the land, are, by the effect of the air, crumbled into dust in a few days, and fertilize the earth in an astonishing degree. - Farewell. - Conclude me

Yours very sincerely, &c.

_Philadelphia, 27th February, 1794._

DEAR FRIEND,

On the fourth instant I left Annapolis on my way to this city.

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