Ground Oak Is Bushy, And Seldom Exceeds Six Feet In Height; It Bears A Small Acorn Of A Very Superiour Flavour, Which Is The Chief Food Of The Deer, And Sheep, Who Run Wild In The Woods. Water And Barren Oak Are Small And Bushy, And Only Used For Firing.

Live oak is _said_ to be very superiour to all the rest, and the best _ship-timber_ in the world.

I am informed it is a sort of evergreen, seldom met with north of the Carolinas.

_Oct. 26th_. - Went to Philadelphia. - After crossing the Delaware, I found the land very different from the Jersey shore; a fine stiff black soil, the clover growing spontaneously. The city exhibited a most melancholy spectacle; most of the houses and stores shut up, and grass growing in many of the streets; what few _white_ inhabitants I met with had a most dejected appearance. The disorder has been most favourable to the softer sex; women with child, and those above and under a certain age, were in general free from the infection: but so fatal has it proved to the other sex, that, in Apple-tree-alley, which does not exceed fifty yards in length, there are upwards of sixty widows within these two months. The total loss on this melancholy occasion already exceeds four thousand, nearly one tenth of the inhabitants! Returning to Woodbury, I met with a quaker, who informed me of the _cause_ of the infectious disorder in the Great City: "_It is_ a judgment on the inhabitants for their sins, insomuch that they sent to England for a number of play-actors, singers, and _musicians_, who were _actually arrived_; and as a just judgment on the Philadelphians for encouraging these _children of iniquity_, they were now afflicted with the yellow fever." I told him, that more likely the sins of the _quakers_ had drawn down this judgment on the city _of brotherly love_, and that it was now scourged for _their_ hypocrisy, lying, canting, and other _manifold iniquities_.

_Oct. 27th_. - Very cold wind at N.W. In the evening snow.

_Oct. 29th_. - Favourable accounts from Philadelphia: the late cold weather has entirely stopped the progress of the disorder.

_November 26th_.

Set out for Annapolis, and arrived there in health, the 29th, at five in the afternoon.

* * * * *

_Annapolis, 17th December, 1793._

DEAR FRIEND,

The bay of Chesapeak is one of the largest in the world. From it's entrance, between capes Henry and Charles, to the mouth of the Susquana, which forms the head of the bay, the distance is two hundred and eighty miles, through which great extent of water the tide ebbs and flows. This bay receives into it's bosom the following rivers; viz. the Patomac, the Rappahanock, the Patapsico, the York, the James, the Severn, and the Elk, beside innumerable creeks, and small streams. On an inlet from this bay, about two hundred miles from it's entrance from the Atlantic, stands Annapolis, the capital of the state of Maryland, so called in honour of queen Anne, as appears from the following extract from their charter:

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