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a calabash lashed around his neck. so that if the urchin should tumble overboard that he can be caught. The Mother usually sits sewing, not with her fingers but with her thumb pushing the needle tho with a thimble on the end of her thumbs. Every day whilst we were at Blenheim Reach we used to serve out the scraps of provisions that were left and you may suppose that it was a noisy and amusing scene, I have seen old women whom one would have thought could not have walked, jump over young ones heads and run scrambling from one boat to the other over the backs of the others and run dashing up to the ladder holding out a calabash for her allowance when a rain would come on I would frequently go to a port to watch their manoeuvers, no sooner than the rains begins to fall when such a pulling off clothes you never did see, each Man and Woman and child trying to get them off before they get wet. All of said clothes are immediately crammed into a calabash and it turned upside down to keep the rain out, I have often thought how miserable some of these people must live, as their only house is a small boat. scarcely large enough for one, However there are other boats which are larger and have mat roof and are comparitively speaking comfortable, whilst we lay in Blenheim Reach our sick list increased to about 80 most of them of billious or rather tipus fever. Several men (3) died and I came within one of it I remember distinctly one day the doctor came and felt my pulse, and then he smiled I knew then that I was better, and so after a long spell I at last got well but was extremely weak This tipus fever comes on with a chill and head ache and one would think that is was nothing but chills and fever. it is very fatal to foreigners after the sickness increased in such a manner we choped down to the Bogue where we laid about one month longer. Whilst we were at the Bogue the french frigate cleopatra was