all week--several nights
at Mr. William Dunlop's.

Wishing you all the happiness and with compliments to all
acquaintance I am, Dear Sir,

Your most humble servant

JAMES ANDERSON

Also in a letter from a young British Officer (also a Scotsman) who was
a military prisoner in a camp at Lancaster, Pennsylvania who was trying
to get to Petersburg, Virginia to see his father who was there on
business from Glasgow, there is this addition.

P.S. I have this moment received a letter from Phila. informing me
of a passport being procured for my going to Virginia. I shall set
off immediately. Adieu.

Can't you picture his excitement after many trials to at last get in
touch with his father!

On March 18, 1783 Archibald Govan sends two letters enclosed to a friend
in New York to forward to Virginia "by the safest, spediest conveyance.
There is probally now a post direct from New York through the
Continent."

In these days ships approached George Town by way of the Western
Channel, as it was called, on the far side of Analostan Island, where
the depth of the water was from twenty-seven to thirty-three feet--deep
enough to admit the passage of an "Indiaman."

George Washington Parke Custis, the owner of Arlington, was much
disturbed when a causeway was built across from the island to the
Virginia shore, and prophesied the filling of the channel and the end of
George Town as a port.

So up the creek to these mills for their produce, and up the great river
to its wharves, piled high with hogsheads of tobacco came these ships
and many more of which we have not the names:

The _Potomack Planter_, Captain James Buchanan, for London.

The brig _Brothers_.

The schooner _Betsey_, bringing rum, coffee, and chocolate.

The ships _Ritson_ and _Felicity_.

The sloops, _Lydia_ and _Betsey_, plying between George Town and New
York. These ships from the North were laden with whale oil to be used
for the lamps which, in 1810, were placed on the streets to "enable the
citizens to go safely to and from evening service."

The _Columbia_ from Martinique, and the ship _Lydia_, Lemuel Toby,
master, for London, which on September 6, 1792 had this advertisement
in _The George Town Weekly Ledger_:

Will sail in twelve or fifteen days: such as may be desirous of
taking passage in said ship may depend on being genteelly
accommodated. For further particulars apply to Col. Wm. Deakins, or