"Falmouth, June 25. 1809.
"My dear Hodgson,
"Before this reaches you, Hobhouse, two officers' wives, three
children, two waiting-maids, ditto subalterns for the troops, three
Portuguese esquires and domestics, in all nineteen souls, will have
sailed in the Lisbon packet, with the noble Captain Kidd, a gallant
commander as ever smuggled an anker of right Nantz.
"We are going to Lisbon first, because the Malta packet has sailed,
d'ye see?--from Lisbon to Gibraltar, Malta, Constantinople, and 'all
that,' as Orator Henley said, when he put the Church, and 'all that,'
in danger.
"This town of Falmouth, as you will partly conjecture, is no great
ways from the sea. It is defended on the sea-side by tway castles, St.
Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying every body
except an enemy. St. Maws is garrisoned by an able-bodied person of
fourscore, a widower. He has the whole command and sole management of
six most unmanageable pieces of ordnance, admirably adapted for the
destruction of Pendennis, a like tower of strength on the opposite
side of the Channel. We have seen St. Maws, but Pendennis they will
not let us behold, save at a distance, because Hobhouse and I are
suspected of having already taken St. Maws by a coup de main.
"The town contains many Quakers and salt fish--the oysters have a
taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country--the women
(blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are flogged at the cart's tail
when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday
noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the mayor.
"I don't know when I can write again, because it depends on that
experienced navigator, Captain Kidd, and the 'stormy winds that
(don't) blow' at this season. I leave England without regret--I shall
return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict
sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no
apple but what was sour as a crab;--and thus ends my first, chapter.
Adieu.
"Yours," &c.