festivity.  The mounting a horse, must afford a most pleasing exercise to those men who are so much at sea.  I was once invited to that house, and had the satisfaction of conducting thither one of the many beauties of that island (for it abounds with handsome women) dressed in all the bewitching attire of the most charming simplicity:  like the rest of the company, she was cheerful without loud laughs, and smiling without affectation.  They all appeared gay without levity.  I had never before in my life seen so much unaffected mirth, mixed with so much modesty.  The pleasures of the day were enjoyed with the greatest liveliness and the most innocent freedom; no disgusting pruderies, no coquettish airs tarnished this enlivening assembly:  they behaved according to their native dispositions, the only rules of decorum with which they were acquainted.  What would an European visitor have done here without a fiddle, without a dance, without cards?  He would have called it an insipid assembly, and ranked this among the dullest days he bad ever spent.  This rural excursion had a very great affinity to those practised in our province, with this difference only, that we have no objection to the sportive dance, though conducted by the rough accents of some self-taught African fiddler.  We returned as happy as we went; and the brightness of the moon kindly lengthened a day which had past, like other agreeable ones, with singular rapidity.

In order to view the island in its longest direction from the town, I took a ride to the easternmost parts of it, remarkable only for the Pochick Rip, where their best fish are caught.  I past by the Tetoukemah lots, which are the fields of the community; the fences were made of cedar posts and rails, and looked perfectly straight and neat; the various crops they enclosed were flourishing:  thence I descended into Barrey’s Valley, where the blue and the spear grass looked more abundant than I had seen on any other part of the island; thence to Gib’s Pond; and arrived at last at Siasconcet.  Several dwellings had been erected on this wild shore, for the purpose of sheltering the fishermen in the season of fishing; I found them all empty, except that particular one to which I had been directed.  It was like the others, built on the highest part of the shore, in the face of the great ocean; the soil appeared to be composed of no other stratum but sand, covered with a thinly scattered herbage.  What rendered this house still more worthy of notice in my eyes, was, that it had been built on the ruins of one of the ancient huts, erected by the first settlers, for observing the appearance of the whales.  Here lived a single family without a neighbour; I had never before seen a spot better calculated to cherish contemplative ideas; perfectly unconnected with the great world, and far removed from its perturbations.  The ever raging ocean was all that presented itself to the view of this family; it irresistibly attracted my