Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/279

 Rh what I thought was the force of the particle "Eth," in the first verse of the Hebrew Bible?) a great financier, who has proposed a desirable scheme of a bank which was to enrich us all,—the only requisite being that the Government should lend us 100,000l.!! Yet with his varied talents, he is a mere boatman plying on our river.

27th.—Ten at night. I have drawn my chair near the fire, and have thrown on an additional log, that I may write my journal luxuriously. A boat having come up the river to-day from Perth, I got ready twenty bushels of wheat, and sent it to the Government store, as the first instalment in payment for advances.

My debt amounts to not much. About 60l. for beef, wheat oats, peas, oatmeal, tea and sugar. The advances were made at a time when these articles were scarcely to be had through any channel. We have had twelve months' credit, and it has been of the greatest assistance to us; indeed I know not what many of us could have done without some such aid. By the way, you wrote that "oatmeal would not keep,"—the Government meal is marked of the year 1829. I have a little of it yet, and it is as good as on the day it was exported. I believe there is some mode of packing it air-tight, and that this is the secret of its keeping so well.