and 7,500, and consisted of a large infusion of French from the West India islands, Scotch and English in considerable proportions, Irish, and New English.  There were some Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese.  Our Norfolk born people, and the people from the neighboring counties, formed the base—­a pretty broad base, but only a base.  Everybody was busy.  Wirt, writing a year or two later to a friend, likened the borough to a hive in which their was no drone.  The outward appearance of things was bad enough.  The houses on the wharves and in the business streets were all of wood, and have since been swept away by successive fires.  There was not a paved street within the bills of mortality.  Immense pools of mud and water were seen everywhere; and it was a favorite amusement of the boys to watch the attempt of a loaded dray to pass through those beds of muck.  There were three merchants at farthest, whose wealth, on a most liberal estimate, might possibly average $100,000, though they thought themselves worth a good deal more.  There was but one brick church, and that was the present St. Paul’s, not, as we now see it, with its tasteful interior, but a rude brickkiln with an enormous cocked hat stuck upon it.  The people heard preaching in the upper rooms of warehouses, in the court-house, or in some rickety concern knocked up for the nonce.  The clergy fared badly.  The rector of a large brick church, then rising, with a wealthy congregation, received for his services one hundred pounds, Virginia currency, which equal three hundred and thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents of our money, and both pastor and people seemed to be satisfied with the bargain.  Small houses, some of which may still be seen, straggled out along Church street, to what is now called Fort Barbour, though not so called till twelve years later.  There was hardly an elegant private residence in the city.  The bricks, of which the best houses were built, were rough and roughly laid.  The houses had no conveniences, except here and there a closet.  They were, however, substantially built, and were neatly finished within.  They invariably had one thing which is fast passing away.  There was the smoke-house in which every housekeeper cured his meat; and there was the dairy; but how they could put the dairy to its proper use I could never find out.  The people had cows, and the cows gave milk; but there was no running water, and there was no ice.  Long years passed before ice was introduced.  The gentlemen of the bar were awake, and made out very well—­much better than the clergy.  The very youngest of the profession fed freely and voluptuously on the black eyes and cracked crowns of Little Water street, with an occasional haul from Exchange alley and the river Styx.  A set, rather older, ventured into the expanse of Broadwater, and talked of the relations of landlord and tenant, of master and apprentice, and sometimes, in that belligerent neighborhood, of husband and wife, and not unfrequently of the writ