NO EMIGRATION* 71 



landlady, passing- the short black pipe from one to another 1 

 Disgusting as this practice is, it is not so much so as one in 

 common use in the Eastern part of Maryland, of girls 

 taking a &quot; rubber&quot; of snuff&quot; that is, taking as much snuff 

 as will lie on the end of the forefinger out of a box, and rub 

 bing it round the inside of the mouth ! 



Nov. 3. Passed through the Pinewoods again, and 

 breakfasted at Umstead s tavern ; as usual, fried beef or 

 pork, pickles and preserves, tea-cakes and butter charge 

 Is. 6d. New York currency, or about \Qhd, which is the 

 general charge in the west ; and 3%d. for bed. From this 

 place I travelled over new ground, to Big Creek ; sandy 

 hills and swampy hollows, and apparently but an indifferent 

 soil generally ; but, on asking a man who was letting off 

 some water from the road near his house, if the land here 

 abouts was not poor ? he said, I have no reason to com 

 plain ; I get good crops, and if I had had my health I should 

 have done well enough saying, the place had been very 

 sickly for some years until this, which had been healthy. 

 The many swamps easily account for sickness in the neigh 

 bourhood. It is rather extraordinary, that 1 have not met 

 with a single person who complained of having bad land ! and 

 but few that appeared discontented. Some higher and better 

 land on its banks than I have come through of late. Sove 

 reign s tavern is pleasantly situated on a small eminence 

 a little, east of it, at the lower end of Talbot Street, and one 

 of the best in its whole length, kept by a civil, and what is 

 here called a clever, obliging person, son of a Dutchman. 

 It is a good new farm-house, with barns and other outbuild 

 ings, and a shed to bait travellers horses under and all 

 being painted and white-washed, cut a dashing appearance 

 at a distance; but when you approach you may see it is 

 only a Canadian, or I might have said an American tavern, 

 with some of its windows broken, and the holes stopped 

 with fragments of old clothes.* There is, too generally, in 

 some of the best houses, both here and in the States, a kind 

 of genteel shabbiness and inconvenience about them ; but 

 here it is quite a new country, and we must not be fastidious, 



* Glass of American manufacture is much used, and being very thin 

 and brittle is easily broken, which, perhaps, is a sufficient apology for 

 the above unsightly objects in a new settlement, when perhaps several 

 miles from a store where glass can be procured. 



