t our disposal, as to prevent their constructing any
material number vessels to dispute it with us. Thus we can penetrate
into the heart of any of their colonies, that may best suit us,
especially with the concurrent aid of the savages, whom we have found
means to attach so strongly to us, and on whom we can greatly depend for
the effectual harrassment of, especially, the back-plantations of the
English.

You see then, Sir, by this summary sketch of the points in contest, that
the war being once engaged, it will not be so easy a matter as many in
Europe imagine, to adjust the pretensions, so various and so important,
of the respective nations, so as to be able to procure a peace. Some, of
the points appear to me absolutely _untreatable_. You may observe too,
that I do not so much as touch upon the dispute about Tabago,
Santa-Lucia, or any of the Leeward islands, which are not, however, of
small consequence. In short, the war must, in all human probability, be
a much longer one, than is commonly believed. Neither nation can
materially relax of its claims, without such a thorough sacrifice of its
interest in America, as nothing but the last extremities of weakness can
compel.

Long as this letter is, I cannot yet close it without mentioning to you
a singular phenomenon of nature, in the island of St. John. You know it
is a flat, level island, chiefly formed out of the congestion of sand
and soil from the sea. Tradition, experience, and authentic public acts
(_Proces verbaux_) concur to attest that every seven years, it is
visited by swarms either of locusts, or of field-mice, alternately,
never together; without its being possible to discover hitherto either
the reason, or the origin of these two species, which thus in their
turns, at the end of every seventh year, pour out all of a sudden in
amazing numbers, and having committed their ravages on all the fruits of
the earth, precipitate themselves into the sea. Neither has any
preventive remedy for this evil been yet discovered. It is well known
how they perish, but, once more, how they are produced no one, that I
could learn, has as yet been able to trace. The field-mice are
undoubtedly something in the nature of those swarms of the sable-mice,
that sometimes over-run Lapland and Norway, though I do not know that
these return so regularly, and at such stated periods, as those of this
island.

I am, Sir,

Your most obedient,

Humble servant.

CHARACTER

O