16 STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE 



lamb make a welcome change of diet, and can be easily- 

 enough conveyed out ; the captain, if he had no other in^ 

 ducement than the expectancy of a share, would put tlieni 

 into one of his boats on deck, and take good care of them. 

 Provisions must be laid in for the live stock, such as barley, 

 bran, &c. A West-Indiaman has generally only one large 

 cabin, in which, the passengers, captain, and mate dine (un- 

 less the former engage the cabin to themselves, in which case 

 it is held sacred), and three or four state-rooms, sufficiently 

 large for placing a crib on one side and a trunk on the other. 

 Steerage passengers have their birth in the steerage, and mess 

 with the crew. 



In the hot latitudes, the British shipping suffers considerable 

 injury from the heat of the sun. The boards of the deck must 

 be continually wetted to preveiit their splitting quite asunder. 

 The tar of the caulking liquefies, and the seams open formi- 

 dably. Unless the vessels are copper-bottomed, the adherence 

 of barnacles and other very little shell-fish, and of long sea- 

 grass, is so "considerable as to retard the sailing ; and the water- 

 worm perforates the timber in so many places, as often to oc- 

 casion a fatal leakiness. Our colony-craft is always bottomed 

 with sieurbally, a very hard wood, but not absolutely worm- 

 proof. Still these hard woods make far fitter vessels for the 

 tropical seas than the European timber. And if the teak-tree 



