m 
Extract of a Letter 
about 1000 inhabitants; here are five 
stores, a meeting, a tavern, a lawyer, 
a blacksmith, a ferry house, and my- 
selt a shoe-maker. The river Merri- 
mac, about sixty rods wide, runs from 
nortii to south in front of our house: 
it is navigable for flat-bottomed boats, 
with locks at the fall for thirty miles; 
and a canal is cut from it near Newbury 
Port to Boston. There is a great deal 
of traffic upon the Merrimac ; in the 
winter from 50 to 100 sleighs pass from 
Vermont in the upper part of this state 
to Boston, with dead hogs, pork, but¬ 
ter, cheese, &c. and load back with 
store goods. They have generally two 
horses, and travel forty miles a day 
with a ton weight; the sleighs used for 
pleasure instead of chaises, are very 
handsome. The winters are very long 
and cold: the rivers are frozen from 
November till May, and the snow upon 
an average is two feet deep. The air 
is generally clear, and the cold steady; 
for a few days I observed the thermo¬ 
meter 24 degrees below zero. Upon 
such nights a person's hair, the blan¬ 
kets on the bed, &c. look as white as if 
they had been powdered. During win¬ 
ter the farmers slide their timber and 
firewood to the rivers, attend their cat¬ 
tle, &c. The common drink is cyder, 
their drain rum, the latter a great evil 
to the Yankees. They generally bar¬ 
rel beef in the fall, and pork in the win¬ 
ter, for the year’s use; much fish is 
eaten in summer: the bread is some¬ 
times rye and Indian corn. They have 
but three meals a day, but these are 
hearty ones : for breakfast, fried meat, 
vegetables, toast, cakes, biscuits, tea, 
coffee, chocolate, butter, cheese. &e. 
They say they don’t like pot-luck (boil¬ 
ed victuals) and seldom have a meal 
withou t a pye baked on plates; in short 
it takes twice as much to keep a Yan¬ 
kee as it would to support a common 
Englishman, but the people of Boston 
live more like the English than any of 
the Americans. Boston is the great 
mart for all the Northern States, and 
in a few years will be the largest manu¬ 
facturing town in America, especially 
.as a dam has been formed three miles 
long, and broad enough for buildings 
on each side, from the old town to the 
main land, This is a turnpike road, 
and here they work silk mills by the 
tide at all times. Now for the princi¬ 
pal question : I assure you I have made 
every possible enquiry, and can safely 
invite you to this happy country ; there 
can btt no doubt of a steady active per- 
describing Batacia, [Sept. 1, 
son doing well, especially a man con¬ 
versant in business as you are, and in 
possession of a little property ; you have 
many distressing accounts in England, 
but is it strange that a person should 
he distressed who lands in a strange 
country without a farthing? and some 
expect miracles, others use no perse¬ 
verance, and sink under their troubles. 
I could have sent you a distressing let¬ 
ter, when I had no money, no tools, no 
furniture, and a child extremely ill; 
but no, I would not—I went into the 
woods, felled a tree, made my lasts, 
went to a smith’s, made my tools, and, 
strange as you may think it, turned out 
such boots as the people here never saw 
before. Bring all the fnrniture you can, 
in a ship direct from London, and if 
you are a steerage passenger, lay in 68 
days provision or more, T. Hands. 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
EXTRACT of a LETTER from a LADY 
(Mrs. Philips, wife of an English 
Missionary,) at BATAVIA, to her 
Friend at BATH. 
April 5, 1820. 
E are now at Ryswiek, about 
three miles from Batavia, which 
renders our situation more healthy; for 
my part 1 have not yet felt the heat 
more .oppressive here than upon a hot 
summer’s day in England, and in some 
parts of the day it is even cooler. This 
is owing to the west or wet monsoon, 
which generally commences about the 
end of November, and continues till 
March or April. During this season 
the inhabitants are exposed to sharp 
winds and violent torrents of rain. 
Thunder storms, accompanied with 
vivid lightning, are very frequent, es¬ 
pecially towards the close of the mon¬ 
soon. Batavia is very fertile; the whole 
year is one perpetual spring; the in¬ 
terior is quite the garden of the east; 
fruit is abundant, but few are equal in 
flavour with that produced in Eng¬ 
land. 
Our liousre Is surrounded with cocoa 
nut trees and plantains, two of the 
standing fruits of the country, and of 
the greatest importance to the natives, 
as with the addition of rice and salt 
they supply them with almost every 
thing which they deem the necessaries 
of life. Cocoa-nut trees grow in almost 
every field around us; however the ta¬ 
ble of an European does not seem com¬ 
plete without a dish of boiled rice and 
Currie, both for breakfast and dinner. 
We lately purchased a milch goat with 
a kid 
