SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 63 



and trenches about town. The canals abound with bottles, as 

 if natural to the soil, and the free negroes, who make spruce 

 beer, go round the town with baskets to pick them up. 

 Any gentleman who wishes to bottle off a pipe of grey- 

 beard Madeira, has nothing to do but send his servants 

 round the town, or a boat alongside any of the shipping, 

 where they may be supplied with bottles in abundance, and 

 have thanks for taking them away, which saves the steward and 

 cabin boy the trouble of throwing them into the river, which 

 they would rather do than land them in England, where the 

 duty would be more than they are worth. On my return to 

 England the other passengers and myself threw into the sea 

 between forty and fifty dozen botdes, emptied in the course 

 of the passage; it was a fund of amusement on a calm day, 

 after throwing in a bottle as a mark, to see who could break 

 it first with others. 



The packets are calculated to arrive at Barbadoes twice a 

 month, whence the mails are conveyed to the different 

 islands and colonies in mail boats engaged for that purpose. 

 How anxiously the arrival of them is expected, is better ex- 

 perienced than described : the merchant and planter desirous 

 of obtaining information of their shipments; the poli- 

 tician wishing to know the state of aft'airs in Europe ; and 

 those of a more domestic turn, solicitous about their fami- 

 lies, are all gratified by their arrival, and are alike impa- 



