364 Original Letters of Dr. Frankiin, 
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. . IfI 
had seen the law, and heard the reasons that are given for 
making it, might have judged and talked, of it more to.the 
purpose, At present [ 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 Dve forgot... L.am, 
Dr. Sir, with the utmost regard, 
Your: obliged humb’] serv’t. 
B. FRANKLIN. 
3. Pairapeupntia, 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 5 but before 8 a storm blew up:at,.N.E. and contin- 
ued violent all night and allnext day; the sky thick,clouded, 
dark and ray, so that neither moon nor stars, could be seen. 
The storm did a great deal of damage all along the.coast, for 
we had accounts of it in the newspapers from Boston, New- 
port, New-York, Maryland and Virginia, . But, whatsurpri- 
sed me was to find in the Boston newspapers,an account of 
an obervation of that eclipse. made there :, for I thought as 
the storm came from the N. E. it. must have begun, sooner 
at Boston ‘than with us, and consequently have prevented 
such observation. I wrote to. my brother about it, and; he 
informed me that the eclipse was over there an hour before 
the storm began. \ Since which I have made enquiries from 
' time*to time of travellers/and of my correspondents, north- 
eastward and south-westward, and observed the accounts in 
the newspapers from, N. England, N. York, Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, and South+Carolina, andJ find it:to. bea constant fact, 
that N. East storms begin to leeward, and: are. often more 
violent. there. than: farther to. windward... Thus the, last 
