But, though excluded from men’s letters, we do not need their correspondence to inform us that wives, mothers, sisters and nurses formed no inconsiderable part of the population of Pensacola in those early days, for we know it as certainly, fully, and confidently as we know the town must have been blessed with air, light, food, and all the other vivifying conditions of human existence. It has been intimated that fiddles were the subject of correspondence, and thuswise. It appears that General Haldimand was the owner of two fiddles. Whether fiddling was one of his accomplishments does not appear. But as ownership of one fiddle ordinarily creates the presumption that the owner is a performer in some one of the three degrees of good, bad or indifferent, the ownership of two would seem to be conclusive of the fact. However that may be, it seems that Governor Thomas Penn of Pennsylvania had knowledge of the instruments, and, presumably, knowing their merits, coveted them to such a degree that the general induced him to pay $360 for them. As the bargain was made by letter, after the general and the fiddles had been in Pensacola for several years, we may infer that their dulcet tones must have made a deep and ineffaceable impression upon the governor, which no other fiddles could remove. By a vessel sailing from Pensacola to Philadelphia, the general sent a box containing the two fiddles to Mr. Joseph Shipping of that place, agent of Governor Penn, and also a letter to Hugh Ross, his own agent, whom he tells (evidently with the chuckle of a trader who has made a good bargain) of the $360 he is to collect from Shipping, closing the letter with the exclamation, “I wish I had more fiddles to sell!” Correspondence in 1767 shows courtesies exchanged between Pensacola and Philadelphia. A Pensacolian sends a sea turtle, and the Philadelphian returns a cheese. The town was accused of being hot and inhospitable. But the letter of complaint tells what a specific wine is for the prevention of all climatic diseases and the other ills of life. One gentleman, to be sure of a supply of the panacea, orders a pipe of old Madeira.