they were stopped at the _Nore_,
which is at the entrance of the Thames. They are every day drafting
more, which are destined for the dismal prison house. We are all
struck with horror at the idea of our removal from our ships in the
river Medway, which runs through a beautiful country. It is "the
untried scene," that fills us with dread, "for clouds and darkness
rest upon it." Last year we were transported from inhospitable Nova
Scotia, over the boisterous Atlantic; and suffered incredible
hardships in a rough winter passage; and now we are to be launched
again on the same tumultuous ocean, to go four hundred miles
coast-wise, to the most dismal spot in England. Who will believe it?
the men who exercised all their art and contrivance, and exerted all
their muscular powers to cut through the double plankings and copper
of a ship of the line, in hopes of escaping from her, now leave the
same ship with regret! I have read of men who had been imprisoned,
many years, in the Bastile, who, when liberated, sighed to return to
their place of long confinement, and felt unhappy out of it! I thought
it wondrous strange; but I now cease to be surprised. This prison
ship, through long habit, and the dread of a worse place, is actually
viewed with feelings of attachment. Of the hundred men who were sent
hither last year, from Halifax, there are only about seventy of us
remaining on board the Crown Prince. The next draft will lessen our
numbers; and separate some of those who have been long associates in
bondage. It is not merely the bodily inconvenience of being
transported here and there, that we dread, so much as the exposure to
insult, and sarcasm of our unfeeling enemies. We have been, and still
dread to be again placed in rows, on board of a ship, or in a prison
yard, to be stared at by the British vulgar, just as if we were Guinea
negroes, exposed to the examination of some scoundrel negro merchants,
commissioned to re-stock a plantation with black cattle, capable of
thinking, talking, laughing and weeping. This is not all. We have
been obliged often to endure speeches of this sort, most commonly
uttered in the _Scotch_ accent.--"My life on't that fellow is a
renegado Englishman, or Irishman--an halter will be, I hope, his
portion. D--n all such rebel-_looking_ rascals." Whatever our feelings
and resentments may be on account of impressment, inhuman treatment,
and plundering our fobs and pockets, and of our clothing, we never