Journal of a West India Proprietor

Expect our sailing in a few hours. But although the vessel left the Docks on Saturday, she did not reach this place till three o’clock on Thursday, the 9th. The captain now tells me, that we may expect to sail certainly in the afternoon of to-morrow, the 10th. I expect the ship’s cabin to gain greatly by my two days’ residence at the “———————,” which nothing can exceed for noise, dirt, and dulness. Eloisa would never have established “black melancholy” at the Paraclete as its favourite residence, if she had happened to pass three days at an inn at Gravesend: nowhere else did I ever see the sky look so dingy, and the river “Nunc alio patriam quaero sub sole jacentem.”—Virgil.