364 Original Letters of Dr. Franklin. 
ted, and the duty discourage the transportation to your neigh 
bours, will not all of your people that want to dispose of 
lumber, be laid at the mercy of those few merchants that 
send it to the West Indies, who will buy it at their own 
price, and make such pay for it as they think proper. If] 
had seen the law, and heard the reasons that are given for 
making it, I might have judged and talked of it more to the 
purpose, At present I shoot my bolt pretty much in the 
dark: But you can excuse and make proper allowances. 
My best respects to good Mrs. Eliot and your sons; and if it 
falls in your way, my service to the kind hospitable people 
near the river, whose names I am sorry I’ve forgot. I am, 
Dr. Sir, with the utmost regard, 
Your obliged humb’! serv’t. 
B. FRANKLIN. 
<3 Puttape.pusa, Feb, 13, 1749. 
Dear Sir, 
_. You desire to know my thoughts about the N. E. storms 
beginning to leeward. Some years since there was an 
eclipse of the moon at 9 in the evening, which I intended. to 
observe ; but before 8 a storm blew up at N. E. and contin- 
ued violent all night and all next day ; the sky thick clouded, 
dark and rainy, so that neither moon nor stars could be seen. 
the newspapers from N. England, N. York, Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, and South-Carolina, and I find it to be a constant fact, 
that N. East storms begin to leeward, and are often more 
violent there than farther to windward. Thus the last 
