Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/204

 186 sitting in court every day eight or nine hours, exposed to a draught of wind blowing about my head. I suffered great torture every evening, and passed sleepless nights, but fortunately did not feel pain during the day, probably on account of mental occupation. It was truly a relief to have the week over. I reached Red Cliff yesterday in time for dinner, when I found a merry party: among them, Mr. and Mrs. Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Tanner, Mr. Drake, and Miss Parkes, Messrs. Yule, Erskine, and Dale.

I arrived at home this evening at nine o'clock; so you perceive I have lost no time in pulling up my arrear of diary.

13th.—Got another hundred of cabbages put down to-day, and had my potatoes moulded.

I must subjoin a list of articles which are essential to my little housekeeping, and which you can send out yearly, for we require annual remittances to keep up our stock, as our merchants do not themselves import, but buy up what arrives, which they sell out at exorbitant prices.

Four casks of pork; five barrels of American flour, 200 lbs. each: one dress suit of black cloth, one pair of dress boots, one pair of walking ditto, one pair of dancing-shoes; a web of coarse linen for ticking, ditto for sheets; calico sheets, blankets, and counterpanes; corduroy trowsers, slop shoes, jackets, and waistcoats; and twelve coarse cotton checkshirts; a small crate of crockery—strong delf—breakfast and dinner-services; milk pans; short worsted and cotton stockings. The crockery ware might be packed in grass. A little red clover seed will also be acceptable.

The articles named would not only enable me to keep out of the market myself, but to pay those servants whom I must employ and feed, at the rate of £60 per annum each, as calculated by colonial prices. We have no flannel, blankets, counterpanes, nor scarcely any woollen thing in the colony. All our friends at home seem to act on the same persuasion,