Such a number of roads in different directions cross over these flats, upon none of which there is any thing like a direction post, and the face of a human being is so rarely met with, that it is scarcely possible for a traveller to find out the direct way at once. Instead of twelve miles, the distance by the straight road from Port Tobacco to the ferry, my horse had certainly travelled twice the number before we got there. The ferry-house was one of those old dilapidated mansions that formerly was the residence perhaps of some wealthy planter, and at the time when the fields yielded their rich crops of tobacco would have afforded some refreshment to the weary traveller; but in the state I found it, it was the picture of wretchedness and poverty. After having waited for two hours and a half for my breakfast, the most I could procure was two eggs, a pint of milk, and a bit of cake bread, scarcely as big as my hand, and but little better than dough. This I had also to divide with my servant, who came to inform me, that there was absolutely nothing to eat in the house but what had been brought to me. I could not but mention this circumstance to several persons when I got into Virginia, and many of them informed me, that they had experienced the same treatment themselves at this house; yet this house had the name of a tavern. What the white people who inhabited it lived upon I could not discover, but it was evident that they took care of themselves. As for the poor slaves, however, of which there were many in the huts adjoining the tavern, they had a most wretched appearance, and seemed to be half starved. The men and women were covered with rags, and the children were running about stark naked. [Sidenote: EXCELLENT FISH.] After having got into the ferry boat, the man of the house, as if conscious that he had given me very bad fare, told me that there was a bank of oysters in the river, close to which it was necessary to pass, and that if I chose to stop the men would procure abundance of them for me. The curiosity of getting oysters in fresh water tempted me to stop, and the men got near a bushel of them in a very few minutes. These oysters are extremely good when cooked, but very disagreeable eaten raw; indeed all the oysters found in America, not excepting what are taken at New York, so close to the ocean, are, in the opinion of most Europeans, very indifferent and tasteless when raw. The Americans, on their part, find still greater fault with our oysters, which they say are not fit to be eat in any shape, because they taste of copper. The Patowmac, as well as the rest of the rivers in Virginia, abounds with excellent fish of many different kinds, as sturgeon, shad, roach, herrings, &c. which form a very principal part of the food of the people living in the neighbourhood of them.