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January 14. (Sunday.) 

 I gave a dinner to my " white people," as the 

 book-keepers, &c. are called here, and who have a 

 separate house and establishment for themselves ; 

 and certainly a man must be destitute of every 

 spark of hospitality, and have had " Caucasus 

 horrens " for his great-grandmother, if he can resist 

 giving dinners in a country where Nature seems to 

 have set up a superior kind of " London Tavern " 

 of her own. They who are possessed by the " Ci- 

 borura ambitiosa fames, et lautae gloria mensae," 

 ought to ship themselves off for Jamaica out of 

 hand ; and even the lord mayor himself need not 

 blush to give his aldermen such a dinner as is 

 placed on my table, even when I dine alone. Land 

 and sea turtle, quails, snipes, plovers, and pigeons 

 and doves of all descriptions — of which the ring-tail 

 has been allowed to rank with the most exquisite 

 of the winged species, by epicures of such distinc- 

 tion, that their opinion, in matters of this nature, 

 almost carries with it the weight of a law, — excel- 

 lent pork, barbicued pigs, pepperpots, with num- 

 berless other excellent dishes, form the ordinary 

 fare ; while the poultry is so large and fine, that if 

 the Dragon of Wantley found £< houses and churches 

 to be geese and turkies" in England, he would 

 mistake the geese and turkies for houses and 

 churches here. Then our tarts are made of pine- 

 apples, and pine-apples make the best tarts that I 



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