duties paid for the entrance of any commodity then, wine, rum, and sugar, were cheaper than can easily be imagined, and in cider they abounded. The negroes of the three truly united brothers, not having home employment in winter, after preparing fuel, used to cut down trees, and carry them to an adjoining saw-mill, where, in a very short time, they made great quantities of planks, staves, &c., which is usually styled lumber, for the West-India market. And when a ship-load of their flour, lumber, and salted provisions was accumulated, some relative, for their behoof, freighted a vessel, and went out to the West-Indies with it. In this stygian schooner, the departure of which was always looked forward to with unspeakable horror, all the stubborn or otherwise unmanageable slaves were embarked, to be sold by way of punishment. This produced such salutary terror, that preparing the lading of this fatal vessel generally operated a temporary reform at least. When its cargo was discharged in the West-Indies, it took in a lading of wine, rum, sugar, coffee, chocolate, and all other West-India productions, paying for whatever fell short of the value—and returning to Albany, sold the surplus to their friends, after reserving to themselves a most liberal supply of all the articles thus imported. Thus they had not only a profusion of all the requisites for good house-keeping, but had it in their power to do what was not unusual there in wealthy families, though none carried it so far as these worthies. In process of time, as people multiplied, when a man had eight or ten children to settle in life, and these marrying early, and all their families increasing fast, though they always were considered as equals, and each kept a neat house and decent outside, yet it might be that some of them were far less successful than others in their various efforts to support their families; but these deficiencies were supplied in a quiet and delicate way, by presents of every thing a family required, sent from all their connexions and acquaintances—which, where there was a continual sending back and forward of sausages, pigs, roasting-pieces, &c. from one house to another, excited little attention; but when aunt’s West-India cargo arrived, all the families of this description within her reach, had an ample boon sent them of her new supply.