Travels In The United States Of America; Commencing In The Year 1793, And Ending In 1797. With The Author's Journals Of His Two Voyages Across The Atlantic By William Priest































































































































































 -  The poor creature must have been driven off
the coast of America in a violent gale at N.W., the - Page 3
Travels In The United States Of America; Commencing In The Year 1793, And Ending In 1797. With The Author's Journals Of His Two Voyages Across The Atlantic By William Priest - Page 3 of 34 - First - Home

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The Poor Creature Must Have Been Driven Off The Coast Of America In A Violent Gale At N.W., The Distance From Any Land Being Upwards Of A Thousand Miles; No Other Circumstance Could Account For It's Flying So Far.

_Sept. 19th_.

- Wind at N.N.W. very moderate; - the afternoon calm. The sun set this evening with uncommon beauty, that glorious luminary was surrounded with clouds of a vivid yellow, green, and red; strongly shaded with black half the extent of the horizon. The moon at the same time rising to the east-ward, with a cool and faint sky, formed a strong and beautiful contrast.

_Sept. 21st_. - Wind S. with rain. Caught four dolphins, which afforded us a most delicious repast: in the paunch of one was found a dodon, or globe-fish; the sailors call it a parrot-fish, from its having a beak exactly resembling that bird. - At 9 A.M. spoke with the Queen Charlotte of London, bound to Bristol, out ten days from Baltimore; the captain's account of the longitude 67. Our joy in being so near the land was of short continuance; for, in one hour after, we spoke with the Union, eight days from Philadelphia. The captain informed us, there was a sort of plague in that city, which carries off great numbers, and that ten thousand of the inhabitants had fled to the country, to avoid the infection.

_Sept. 24th_. - Soundings at 60 fathom: lay to all night.

_Sept. 25th_. - Woke with the cry of "Land." At 10 A.M. we took a pilot on board: he informed us the disorder at Philadelphia is the yellow fever, imported in a french schooner from the West Indies; some of the passengers of this vessel died of this fatal disorder, at a lodging-house in Water-street, and communicated the infection to the family. It is now spreading rapidly through the city, in all directions. The faculty, so far from being able to cure this disorder, have, in several instances, fallen victims to it's fury. Within this few days, a Dr. Rush has discovered this disorder is _not_ the yellow fever of the West Indies and has applied an opposite mode of cure by copious bleedings, mercurial medicines, &c. with some success. What is truly extraordinary, the infection does not affect _people of colour!_

_Sept. 28th._ - Came to an anchor off Glocester Point, five miles below Philadelphia: the vessel proceeds no further at present, as all intercourse with the city is cut off, and business at a stand.

_October 1st_.

Brought my baggage on shore, and arrived, at four in the afternoon, at Woodbury, the county town of Glocester, in the state of West Jersey. With some difficulty I procured a lodging within half a mile of the town. Woodbury consists of about fifty well built houses, chiefly inhabited by quakers, and other dissenters of the most rigid kind; so very primitive are they in their appearance, that a barber cannot make a living among them.

_Oct. 13th_. - Spent the last ten days in shooting, and rambling about the woods. The face of the country is exactly that of an immense forest, entirely covered with wood, except the plantation cleared by the settlers. The land sandy, and by no means of a good quality; the chief produce maize, or indian corn. I counted the increase of _one_ stalk with three ears; the amount of the grains were upward of _one thousand two hundred_.

_Oct. 16th_. - I believe the Americans conceive their woods to be inexhaustible. My landlord this day cut down thirty-two young cedars to make a hog-pen. A settler informs me, he raised a gum tree from the seed, which, in sixteen years, measured twenty inches diameter, three feet from it's base. He tells, me they have ten species of oak; viz, white, black, red, spanish, turkey, chesnut, ground, water, barren, and live oak. The white, turkey, and chesnut are used for ship-timber; the acorn of the latter very superiour in size to any other. Red oak is chiefly used for pipe-staves, and exported to most parts of Europe, and the West Indies. Black oak is a dry wood, and easily splits; is chiefly used for the rails and fences of their enclosures. Ground oak is bushy, and seldom exceeds six feet in height; it bears a small acorn of a very superiour flavour, which is the chief food of the deer, and sheep, who run wild in the woods. Water and barren oak are small and bushy, and only used for firing. Live oak is _said_ to be very superiour to all the rest, and the best _ship-timber_ in the world. I am informed it is a sort of evergreen, seldom met with north of the Carolinas.

_Oct. 26th_. - Went to Philadelphia. - After crossing the Delaware, I found the land very different from the Jersey shore; a fine stiff black soil, the clover growing spontaneously. The city exhibited a most melancholy spectacle; most of the houses and stores shut up, and grass growing in many of the streets; what few _white_ inhabitants I met with had a most dejected appearance. The disorder has been most favourable to the softer sex; women with child, and those above and under a certain age, were in general free from the infection: but so fatal has it proved to the other sex, that, in Apple-tree-alley, which does not exceed fifty yards in length, there are upwards of sixty widows within these two months. The total loss on this melancholy occasion already exceeds four thousand, nearly one tenth of the inhabitants! Returning to Woodbury, I met with a quaker, who informed me of the _cause_ of the infectious disorder in the Great City: "_It is_ a judgment on the inhabitants for their sins, insomuch that they sent to England for a number of play-actors, singers, and _musicians_, who were _actually arrived_; and as a just judgment on the Philadelphians for encouraging these _children of iniquity_, they were now afflicted with the yellow fever." I told him, that more likely the sins of the _quakers_ had drawn down this judgment on the city _of brotherly love_, and that it was now scourged for _their_ hypocrisy, lying, canting, and other _manifold iniquities_.

_Oct.

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