hard for the teeth of fome people, may be foftened by steeping it; but bread double-baked is the best; for being made of good loaf-bread cut into flices, and baked a fecond time, it readily imbibes water, becomes foft, and is easily digefted it confequently forms excellent nourishment, much fuperior to that of biscuit, which has not been fermented.

I must here observe, that this doublebaked bread was originally the real biscuit prepared to keep at fea; for the word biscuit, in French, fignifies twice baked *. Pease often boil badly, and do not become foft; in fuch a case, by putting a two-pound shot into the kettle, the rolling of the veffel, by means of this bullet, will convert the peafe into a kind of porridge, like mustard.

Having often feen foup, when put

* It is derived from bis again, and cuit baked.

upor

upon the table at sea in broad flat dishes, thrown out on every fide by the rolling of the veffel, I have wished that our tin-men would make our foup-bafons with divifions or compartments; forming finall plates, proper for containing foup for one perfon only. By this difpofition, the foup, in an extraordinary roll, would not be thrown out of the plate, and would not fall into the breafts of those who are at table, and fcald them. Having entertained you with thefe things of little importance, permit me now to conclude with fome general reflections upon navigation.

When navigation is employed only for tranfporting neceffary provifions from one country, where they abound, to another where they are wanting; when by this it prevents famines, which were fo frequent and fo fatal before it was invented and became fo common; we cannot help confidering it as one of those

arts

arts which contribute moft to the happiness of mankind.-But when it is employed to transport things of no utility, or articles merely of luxury, it is then uncertain whether the advantages refult-. ing from it are fufficient to counterbalance the misfortunes it occafions by expofing the lives of fo many individuals upon the vast ocean. And when it is used to plunder veffels and transport flaves, it is evidently only the dreadful means of increafing thofe calamities which afflict human nature..

One is astonished to think on the number of veffels and men who are daily expofed in going to bring tea from China, coffee from Arabia, and fugar and tobacco from America; all commodities which our ancestors lived very well without. The fugar-trade employs nearly a thousand veffels; and that of tobacco almoft the fame number. With regard to the utility of tobacco, little VOL. I. K

can

can be said; and, with regard to sugar, how much more meritorious would it be to facrifice the momentary pleasure which we receive from drinking it once or twice a-day in our tea, than to encourage the numberlefs cruelties that are continually exercised in order to procure it us?

A celebrated French moralift faid, that, when he confidered the wars which we foment in Africa to get negroes, the great number who of courfe perish in thefe wars; the multitude of thofe wretches who die in their paffage, by disease, bad air, and bad provifions; and lastly, how many perish by the cruel treatment they meet with in a state of flavery; when he faw a bit of fugar, he could not help imagining it to be covered with spots of human blood. But, had he added to thefe confiderations the wars which we carry on against one another, to take and retake the islands that produce

8

produce this commodity, he would not have seen the fugar fimply Spotted with blood, he would have beheld it entirely tinged with it.

Thefe wars make the maritime powers of Europe, and the inhabitants of Paris and London, pay much dearer for their fugar than thofe of Vienna, though they are almoft three hundred leagues diftant from the fea. A pound of fugar, indeed, costs the former not only the price which they give for it, but also what they pay in taxes, neceffary to fupport those fleets and armies which ferve to defend and protect the countries that produce it.