we had been no less than five hours in travelling the last twelve miles. [Sidenote: MUSQUITOES.] Skenesborough stands just above the junction of Wood Creek with South River, as it is called in the best maps, but which, by the people in the neighbourhood, is considered as a part of Lake Champlain. At present there are only about twelve houses in the place; but if the navigation of Wood Creek is ever opened, so as to connect Lake Champlain with the North River, a scheme which has already been seriously thought of, it will, doubtless, soon become a trading town of considerable importance, as all the various productions of the shores of the lake will then be collected there for the New York and Albany markets. Notwithstanding all the disadvantages of a land carriage of forty miles to the North River, a small portion of flour and potash, the staple commodities of the state of New York, is already sent to Skenesborough from different parts of the lake, to be forwarded to Albany. A considerable trade also is carried on through this place, and over Lake Champlain, between New York and Canada. Furs and horses principally are sent from Canada, and in return they get East Indian goods and various manufactures. Lake Champlain opens a very ready communication between New York and the country bordering on the St. Lawrence; it is emphatically called by the Indians, Caniad—Eri Guarunte, the mouth or door of the country. [Sidenote: MUSQUITOES.] Skenesborough is most dreadfully infested with musquitoes; so many of them attacked us the first night of our sleeping there, that when we arose in the morning our faces and hands were covered all over with large pustules, precisely like those of a person in the small pox. This happened too notwithstanding that the people of the house, before we went to bed, had taken all the pains possible to clear the room of them, by fumigating it with the smoke of green wood, and afterwards securing the windows with gauze blinds; and even on the second night, although we destroyed many dozens of them on the walls, after a similar fumigation had been made, yet we suffered nearly as much. These insects were of a much larger size than any I ever saw elsewhere, and their bite was uncommonly venomous. General Washington told me, that he never was so much annoyed by musquitoes in any part of America as in Skenesborough, for that they used to bite through the thickest boot. The situation of the place is indeed peculiarly favourable for them, being just on the margin of a piece of water, almost stagnant, and shaded with thick woods. The musquito is of the same species with the common gnat in England, and resembles it very closely both in size and shape. Like the gnat it lays its eggs on the surface of the water, where they are hatched in the course of a few days, unless the water is agitated, in which last case they are all destroyed. From the egg is produced a grub, which changes to a chrysalis, and afterwards to a musquito; this last