- ing sand, and pulverizes it in such a manner, that the
most gentle wind fills the shops with it, and renders it very disagreeable to foot passengers. At regular distances pumps supply the inhabitants with water of such a brackish taste, that it is truly astonishing how foreigners can grow used to it. Two-thirds of the houses are built with wood, the rest with brick. According to the last computation, made in 1803, the population, comprising foreigners, amounted to 10,690 whites and 9050 slaves.
Strangers that arrive at Charleston, or at any town in the United States, find no furnished hotels nor rooms to let for their accommodation, no coffee-houses where they can regale themselves. The whole of this is replaced by boarding-houses, where every thing necessary {9} is provided. In Carolina you pay, at these receptacles, from twelve to twenty piastres per week. This enormous sum is by no means proportionate to the price of provisions. For example, beef very seldom exceeds sixpence a pound. Vegetables are dearer there than meat. Independent of the articles of consumption that the country supplies, the port of Charleston is generally full of small vessels from Boston, Newport, New York, and Philadelphia, and from all the little intermediate ports, which are loaded with flour, salt provisions, potatoes, onions, carrots, beet-roots, apples, oats, Indian corn, and hay. Planks and building materials comprize another considerable article of importation; and although these different kinds of produce are brought from three to four hundred leagues, they are not so dear and of a better quality than those of their own growth.
In winter the markets of Charleston are well stocked with live sea-fish, which are brought from the northern part of the United States in vessels so constructed as to
