591 



providential that England should give them 

 such enormous prices as it does for their 

 v^heat and flour; which may probably fetch 

 them up again : for the average price of 

 wheat was eleven shillings per bushel, but 

 is now seventeen shillings ; w^hich must 

 -give them great assistance towards paying 

 the store-keepers, as it appears to have been 

 a custom for many years past to pay them 

 annually. Notwithstanding this, however, 

 the natural poverty of the soil is a misfor- 

 tune never to be remedied. 



I have heard a lady in Baltimore, who is 

 now the wife of a merchant, say, she was 

 the daughter of one of the first planters in 

 Maryland, and that after the wheat and 

 tobacco w^ere sold, when the store-keeper's 

 bill was discharged, the overseer paid, &c. 

 her father would not have above two or 

 three hundred dollars left, which were 

 soon spent ; and he was perhaps the whole 

 year after without a dollar in his pocket. — • 

 The lady further observed, that she had 

 three sisters, and they kept a carriage, had 



