able to pay debt and costs, or give security, was actually sentenced to be sold for a term of years, until his labour {88} had paid the demand. How equitable! How patriarchal!
I am here paying 3 s. 6d. a bottle for bad London porter, just 700l. per cent. above cost, and 18s. 8d. a gallon; three times dearer than real French brandy, or any other spirits, the best of which is sold at a dollar and a half a gallon.
At Charleston, no black man, though free and rich, and having horses and carriages to let, as for instance, John Jones, the landlord of the best house in the city, is permitted to ride them for pleasure as his own, nor to be seen out of his own house after ten at night, when the thundering drum and the centinels from the guard-house, go round to clear the streets of all men, women, or children, stained with negro blood.
Sunday, 27th.—It was reported this morning that the pestilence, called the yellow fever, had made its entry into this city, and that the board of health had, as is usual, requested all strangers and visitors to depart. This report was, in part, untrue; one man in the hospital had just died of it, but he brought it with him from the Havannah. This disease in its nature seems at present not understood, nor correctly defined by the faculty here. Disputes have arisen only to darken the subject. Some hold it to be contagious, others infectious. The houses, in which it first appears, are generally pulled down; while others are fumigated and washed with strong lime-water, and the families {89} removed from the street to the fields and kept in tents. This disease seems confined to the western world, and to have been known there, from the time of its discovery by Columbus; but it prevails most in
