ILLUSTRATION'S. 41 



no third person but you ; who, if you were with us, would never be satisfied 

 without three more." In the second letter he says, " I am very much obliged 

 to you for the favour of a kind reproach you sent me in a letter to mr. Addtson, 

 which he never told me of till this day, and that accidentally ; but I am glad at 

 the same time that I did not deserve it, having sent you a long letter in return 

 to that you was pleased to honour me with, and it is a pity it should be lost ; 

 for, as I remember, it was full of the diei fabulas, and surh particularities 33 

 usually do not find place in newspapers .* These quotations indicate the great 

 intimacy between Hunter and those distinguished men. 



The same volume contains two letters from Hunter to Swift, dated New- York 

 1st and I4th of March, 1712 13, both breathing great discontent and uneasiness 

 with his situation. In the last he says, " Here is the finest air to live upon in 

 the universe, and, if our trees and birds could speak and our assemblymen be 

 silent, the finest conversation too. Fert omnia tellus ; but not for me ; for you 

 must undei"stand, according to the custom of our country, the sachems are of the 

 poorest of the people. I have got the wrong side of sir Polidofe's office ; a 

 great deal to do, and nothing to receive. In a word, and to be serious at last, 1 

 have spent three years of life in such torment and vexation that nothing in life 

 can ever make amends for it." 



Hunter was afterwards appointed governor and captain general of Jamaica, i/> 

 ''he room of the duke of Portland, who died there ir: 1 ' 



.NOTE ?, 



'the first institution in the United States established as a repository of the 

 native vegetable productions of this country, and for the purpose of naturalizing 

 such foreign plants as are distinguished by their utility either in medicine, 

 agriculture, or the arts, was the Elgin Botanic Garden, founded in 1801, by 

 dr. David Hosack, at that time Professor of Botany and Materia Medica in 

 Columbia College. Tins establishment is situated about three miles from the 

 -*ity of New-York, on the middle road between Bloomingdale and Kingsbridge. 

 The ground, consisting of about twenty acres, was originally purchased of the 

 corporation of this city. The view, from the most elevated, part is variegated 

 and extensive ; and the soil itself of that diversified nature as to be 

 particularly arbrhv' 'n+he cultivation of :\ -rreat varVty <*.f vegetable p. 



