isoner in that depot of
misery, for such he describes it. He tells us that it is situated in
the most dreary and uncultivated spot in England; and that to the
sterility of the soil are added the black coloring of superstition.

A _Moor_, a word not used in America, is used in England to denote a
low, marshy piece of ground, or an elevated sterile spot, like our
pine-barren's, divested of every thing like a pine tree. It denotes
something between a beach and a meadow. It is a solemn-faced-truth in
this country of our superstitious ancestors, that every extensive and
dreary _moor_, in England, is haunted by troubled ghosts, witches, and
walking dead men, visiting, in a sociable way, each other's graves. It
is really surprising, to an intelligent American, and incredible, that
stout, hearty, and otherwise bold Englishmen, dare not walk alone over
the dreary spot, or _moor_, where the prison now stands, in a dark and
cloudy night, without trembling with horror, at _a nothing_! The minds
of Scotchmen, of all ranks, are more or less beclouded with this sort
of superstition. They still believe in ghosts, witches, and a _second
sight_! Free as we are from this superstition, we have rather more of
it than the French. The English and American theatres still relish
Macbeth and Hamlet. Beside the stories of witches flying about in the
air, and dead men strolling over the _moor_, the letter contained an
account of the origin of this new famous prison. It stated that this
_Dartmoor_ belonged to that beautiful gambler, the Dutchess of
Devonshire;[I] who lost it in a game of hazard with the Prince of
Wales; who, to enhance the value of it, (he being, as all the world
knows, a very contriving, speculating, economical, close fisted,
miserly genius) contrived to have erected there a species of a
fortress, enclosing seven very large buildings, or prisons, for the
reception of captured seamen; from which establishment its royal
landlord received a very handsome annual rent; and this princely
anecdote is as firmly believed as the stories of the witches, and the
walking dead men. The only remark we would make upon it here, is, that
_Dartmoor_ has a dismal idea associated with it--and that was
sufficient to make our people conceive of it as a place doleful as a
coal-pit.

Not long after the receipt of this letter, one hundred and fifty of
our countrymen were sent off, by water, to this _Dartmoor Prison_; but
the measles appearing among them,