173 



or hotel; but many of the best families accommodated strangers 

 for a Spanish dollar a day. Mr. de Witt's was then esteemed the 

 genteelest boarding-house; where, for this sum, I was provided 

 with a neat bed-chamber, the use of the parlours and drawing- 

 room, and four meals a day, besides tea and coffee. At dinner 

 we always sat down with his well-regulated family to a table plenti- 

 fully covered with fish, meat, poultry, and game; a dessert of choice 

 fruit, and every sort of Cape- wine, except constantia. 



Some articles, notwithstanding, were very expensive, especially 

 fuel and washing; strangers often found the latter peculiarly so; 

 for however honest the washerwomen might appear in returning 

 clean linen corresponding in tale with the articles delivered, they 

 generally deferred bringing in the last assortment until the passen- 

 gers were just going on board their ship, who seeing the number 

 correct, suspected no other fraud; but I have known more than 

 one lady much mortified, when, far from any reparation on the 

 distant main, she has found a muslin gown deprived of a breadth, 

 and her cambric handkerchiefs reduced a few inches in size; nor 

 were the gentlemen less annoyed on beholding their shirts and 

 cravats equally curtailed. 



Coach-hire was thought extravagant; they charged eight dol- 

 lars a day for a country excursion, and four for an evening ride. 

 Bread was always at fixed a price; that made of the best wheat 

 flour one penny per pound, which the bakers were allowed to 

 charge after the most plentiful harvests, but not permitted to ad- 

 vance in a season of scarcit} r . The common Cape-wines then sold 

 for ten, twelve, and fifteen dollars the pipe; so that the lower 

 classes amply enjoyed the two great blessings of bread and wine; 



