FROM Williamsburgh to Hampton the country is flat and uninteresting. Hampton is a small town, situated at the head of a bay, near the mouth of James River, which contains about thirty houses and an episcopalian church. A few sea boats are annually built here; and corn and lumber are exported annually to the value of about forty-two thousand dollars. It is a dirty disagreeable place, always infested by a shocking stench from a muddy shore when the tide is out. From this town there is a regular ferry to Norfolk, across Hampton roads, eighteen miles over. I was forced to leave my horses here behind me for several days, as all the flats belonging to the place had been sent up a creek some miles for staves, &c. and they had no other method of getting horses into the ferry boats, which were too large to come close into shore, excepting by carrying them out in these flats, and then making them leap on board. It is a most irksome piece of business to cross the ferries in Virginia; there is not one in six where the boats are good and well manned, and it is necessary to employ great circumspection in order to guard against accidents, which are but too common. As I passed along I heard of numberless recent instances of horses being drowned, killed, and having their legs broken, by getting in and out of the boats. Norfolk stands nearly at the mouth of the eastern branch of Elizabeth River, the most southern of those which empty themselves into the Chesapeak Bay. It is the largest commercial town in Virginia, and carries on a flourishing trade to the West Indies. The exports consist principally of tobacco, flour, and corn, and various kinds of lumber; of the latter it derives an inexhaustible supply from the Dismal Swamp, immediately in the neighbourhood. [Sidenote: NORFOLK.] Norfolk would be a place of much greater trade than it is at present, were it not for the impolicy of some laws which have existed in the state of Virginia. One of these laws, so injurious to commerce, was passed during the war. By this law it was enacted, that all merchants and planters in Virginia, who owed money to British merchants, should be exonerated from their debts if they paid the money due into the public treasury instead of sending it to Great Britain; and all such as stood indebted were invited to come forward, and give their money in this manner, towards the support of the contest in which America was then engaged. The treasury at first did not become much richer in consequence of this law; for the Virginian debtor, individually, could gain nothing by paying the money that he owed into the treasury, as he had to pay the full sum which was due to the British merchant; on the contrary, he might lose considerably: his credit would be ruined in the eyes of the British merchant by such a measure, and it would be a great impediment to the renewal of a commercial intercourse between them after the conclusion of the war.