84 Documents must be some time here before any thing can be done, for you know every thing must have a beginning. As to my living I eat at their own table, and our witualls are all Dressed in the English taste, we have for Breackfast either Coffie or Jaculate,' and warm Loaf bread of the best floor, we have also at table warm loaf bread of Indian corn, which is e.xtreamly good but we use the floor bread alwa)'s at breackfast. for Dinner smoack'd bacon or what we cal pork ham is a standing dish either warm or cold, when warm we have greens with it, and when cold we have sparrow grass, we have also either warm roast pigg. Lamb, Ducks, or chickens, green pease or any thing else they fancy. As for Tea there is none drunk by any in this Government since i'.' June last, nor will they buy a 2"' worth of any kind of east India goods, which is owing to the difference at present be- twixt the Parliment of great Britton and the North Americans about lay- ing a tax on the tea; and I'm afraid if the Parliment do not give it over it will cause a total revolt as all the North Americans are determined to stand by one another, and resolute on it that they will not submit. I have the news paper sent me to school regularly every week by the Col'. — Our family consists of the Col', his Lady and four Children a house- keeper an Overseer and myself all white. But how many blacks young and old the Lord only knows for I belive there is about thirty that works every day in the field besides the servants about the house ; such as Gard- ner, livery men and pages. Cooks, washer and dresser, sewster and wait- ing girle. They wash here the whitest that ever I seed for they first Boyle all the Cloaths with soap, and then wash them, and I may put on clean linen every day if I please. My school is a neate litle House 20 foot long and 12 foot wide and it stands by itself at the end of an Avenue of planting about as far from the main house as Rob! Forbes' s' is from the burn, and there comes a bonny black bairn every morning to clean it out and make my bed, for I sleep in it by myself I have a verry fine feather bed under me, and a pair of sheets, a thin fold of a Blanket and a Cotton bed spread is all my bed cloaths, and I find them just enough, as for myself I supose you wou'd scarce know me now, there being nothing either brown, blew, or black about me but the head and feet, I being Dressed in short cloath Coat, vest Coat, and britches all made of white cotton without any lyning and thread stockins and wearing my own hair curled round like a wigg. at present a suite of Cloaths costs five and twenty shillings here of making which I really think verry high. I was Sunday last at Fredericksburgh at church and I then settled a safe Correspondance for your letters to come to me, and shall give you > Chocolate.
- In the " Annals of the County of Zetland ", referred to in the introductory lines,
supra, this entry is to be found, under date of 1767 : " Compeared Robert Forbes and Tames Forbes, both Operative Masons in Lerwick, Who undertook to furnish and work all the Free Stone necessary in the foresaid Intended Tolbooth," etc. Passages in the letters of December 6, 1774, August 28 and September 8, 1775, which see, J>os/, serve to identify the former of these two brothers with Harrower's former friend.
