Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/139

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country. Friend Steed engages himself to Jones and Co. and begins to repent of having {124} written such deplorable statements against this country. Letters of emigrants and travellers should not be rashly written, because they are shown long after the writer becomes ashamed of them. An emigrant, unable at New York and Baltimore to get employment in his trade, and not to be persuaded to try the towns near, paid his passage this week for England, but first inquired at the news offices for papers stating the number out of employment, which amounts to 1500 families collected in New York city, all in distress seeking a refuge in Canada. Mr. Perry offered several stone-*masons, willing and able to work, to the Pennsylvanian farmers at half a dollar per day, and to keep themselves, but none were wanted. There is no money to pay them with.

14th.—Dined with Mr. Eno, late of Tyd, near Wisbeach, a citizen of the world, a kind-hearted man to emigrants generally, and who preserves entire, for those who call at his tavern, all his original English feelings mixed up with American hospitality. He thinks that few emigrants ever rise above their former stations, or meet with any thing here which should induce them to quit their homes in England; while the bulk of those who come, both masters and labourers, remain miserably poor. "With respect to myself, (says he) if I had a fortune I would live in England; as I have not, I am better off here." I gathered from the ground under a tree in his garden, plums half {125} roasted and too hot almost to hold in the hand or mouth, and eating like fruit half baked. Heat 96° in the shade. This is a demoralizing climate, and to it may be traced that prominent want of industry and good habits invariably seen and felt in this dissolving warmth.