great confideration with the government of France, and Vauban formed a project for this purpofe, which, however, did not take place; it was fimilar to that afterwards adopted, and partly carried into execution in the late king's time, under the adminiftration of Cardinal Fleury: from Ife Pelée a jetty was meant to stretch away for nearly a mile to the weftward; and from Point Hommet, another jetty was to project for about three furlongs to the eastward the entrance of the road was meant to be between the ends of thefe two jetties, and would have been about a mile in width, defended by ftrong forts at the end of each jettée : this plan was a good one, and, in my humble opinion, preferable to the one executing at prefent.

Having, in this fhort preface, put my own recollection to its efforts for the refreshment of your's, I will give you as fuccinct and plain an account of Cherbourg in its prefent ftate as I can, premifing that the defcription will proceed from recollection merely, for I did not think it prudent to make any memorandums whatsoever in writing, while on the fpot, as it might have been attended with danger in these turbulent times efpecially.

On defcending into Cherbourg, from the mountains above it, the rock on either hand had springs of water almost innumerable, though none of them very large; they colJect into the river D'Yvette, on the left hand fide of the road; and this natural effect meets with confiderable encouragement and aid from art in various parts of the defcent: when you attain the more level ground, you find a fluice of masonry, whicb is fo contrived as to collect the water from both fides of the road, and conduct it to a reservoir, where it remains in readiness for such service as it may be required: the principal, if not the only one, is to fcour the

outer bafon, and, at neap tides, t afhift the exit of veffels from it: of all places, I ever faw, I think Cherbourg one of the very dirtieft; an opinion, formed on our driving thro its narrow filthy streets, to the hotel we had been recommended to by the landlord at Valogne, but which being filled with the members of an adjudication, who were come to receive proposals for carrying on the works, and with those who came to attend them: we were glad to be received in a fecond-rate inn, where little except decent cleanliness was wanting.

Notwithstanding our fatigue, we walked about the town, and even af、 cended the mountain la Roule above it, the Grande Place was quite furrounded by a line, partly of the military, and partly of the Bourgeois; the greater number of the latter very ordinary fellows, and fo defcending to the most abfolute refuse imaginable. The news we had heard on the road, of a great riot having happened on the Tuefday preceding, was very true, many of the wretches, concerned in it, were taken up, to the number of near two hundred, and were trying for their offences, which was the reafon of the place being thus furrounded.

Our curiofity here was foon fatisfied, and we walked away to the Convent of Notre Dame du Voeu, about a mile to the north-west of the town; W-regretted here that we had not with us Mr Wraxall's laft tour, which he fays gives a very good defcription of the place; feveral centinels (all of military) were mounted here, who told us we could not enter, the reafon of which, and of additional guards, as we afterwards learned, was apprehenfions from the rioters, and, that both the Duc et Ducheffe de Beuvron were there ill.

Between this place and the town is a very long pile of barracks for the reception of about two thousand

men,

Shen, they are ftrongly built of stone. Several new and broad ftreets are building in this part of the town. We next went up the mountain, which commands a view of the road, town, and great part of the works; the first appearance of the Cones did not come up to the idea I had conceived of them; at that distance they looked but like so many tubs on a grafs plat, and by no means adequate to the vastnefs of the object they were meant to effect. Spring-tides flowing when we were there, at highwater the Cones were but barely vifible above the water's edge; and beautiful and accurate as was our view, it was of fo little information farther than as a good plan, that we did not continue long on the hill; at the very top of which is a little place inclofed with a ftone wall breast-high, where formerly had been a hermitage, and on a ftone in the wall, was a long infcription relative to three or four perfons who had many years refided there as hermits this had several words fpelt in the uncouth way, in which I have endeavoured to give you fome idea of the pronunciation of the Normans, whofe French is bad indeed ;-their affent is fignified by 'Wha, Monzitheir negative by Na-ni Monzi; if you ask if they have fuch or fuch a thing, and they have it, the reply is, Wha Monzi, J'en avons and they ufe in other refpects as well as this, the first perfon plural for the firft perfon fingular. The language of many of the very ordinary people is next to unintelligible.

On Friday morning we waited on Monf. de la Brettonniere, the commandant of the marine department. He received us with great politeness, and faid that we were at liberty to fee every thing going on upon the water; that the Cones already funk were about to be cut down, that the forts were not in his department, and that he would not recommend to us

to make any application to fee them, as we fhould certainly meet with a refufal; fpoke of the confufed ftate in which things were at prefent ; and faid very handfomely, that he wished our arrival had been at a time lefs embarraffing to them, as it could certainly have been rendered more agreeable to us. As we waited upon him without any introduction, and merely from a point of refpect, we were well fatisfied with our reception, and took our leave, to stroll about. In his drawing-room there was a portrait of the king of France, in a fplendid gilt frame, with a scroll expreffing it to have been a prefent from his Majefty. The picture was a very good one, and the countenance had more animation than is ufually given to the pictures of that monarch; whofe prefent fituation must be deeply diftreffing, and the more fo if it occurs to him that the fuffering his minifters to give affistance to the Americans against a natural and lawful government, was inculcating to his own fubjects those leffons they are now fo feverely exercifing against himself-Tu l'a voulu!

The fluice I have already mentioned we saw again; it is a very extenfive piece of excellent mafonry. I walked up and down the ruins of the old Mole, deftroyed in 1758; the very reliques of it are not without their ufe; but we were abfolutely driven home by a heavy rain, and were confined there by it the greater part of the day. In the evening, however, we got out for a little while by dint of boots, great-coats, and umbrellas, to look over the houses deftroyed on Tuesday, one of which was a fample more fufficient than fatisfactory; a more abfolute thell of a houfe could not be feen; every window was broken, all the furniturę deftroyed; the marble chimnies battered to pieces, as alfo the baluftrades of the stairs, the rooms ftripped of the hangings, the large liHh 2

brary

brary of the book-fhelves-and the feathers of the ripped-up beds trodden under foot.

Military centinels were ftationed at these houses-at the first house we faw them; we did not vifit a second. Early on Saturday morning we went to Becquet D'Enville, about three miles and a half to the eastward of Cherbourg; from this place there are about two hundred veffels of from twenty to fixty tons, called the Chaffe Marées, employed in carrying out ftone. On the hill above the village ftands a large range of barracks, that will contain about fifteen hundred men; these are employed on the rocks in digging or in blowing out ftone, which is done to the daily amount of two thoufand tons:-between the hill and the fhore is a large open space of ground to be formed hereafter into an ef planade, but ufed at prefent as a depot for the ftone which, being from day to day blown or dug from the rock, exceeds the daily export, to the Digue at fea, attended, as it muft be, by accidental delays of wind, of tide, &c. to which it cannot but be liable. When, however, circumftances of wind, tide, and weather, favour the fea work, the veffels are all alert, and presently difpofe of this large accumulation of stone.

There is a bafon of twenty feet deep at high water; the original conftruction of it was fuch as to permit veffels to load on the outfide as well as the infide of the bank, or pier, which forms this bafon; this pier is about fifty toifes broad, and had toward the fea a wall which rofe on the outfide of the pier, as we were told, near twelve feet in height; this wall was formed in part of loofe ftones, piled as fences are made in many places in England, in very regular order, but without any cement to hold them together; the confequence of this was, that the ftorm of January, 1788, demolished and carried

away this wall, befides, doing other very confiderable damage to the works; a part of the wall in one lump yet remains; cement having been tried in the construction of it, but, being cemented only within itself, and not connected with the main body, otherwife than as one vaitly larger ftone; this mass was also washed away, and remains till beaten to pieces, which is likely to be a work of great labour, a proof of the ftrength of the cement, and the power of the fea. The folid part of the pier ftood and stands unshaken; whether some still greater fhock of storm may not carry the whole away, must remain for the decifion of time on the attempts of the weather; both of them are of strong influence, and I fhould not be willing to doubt of the final confequence.

From Becquet we failed on the out-going tide, in a good ftrong boat towards Fort Royal,-more menacing in appearance than any thing L have ever feen; it has three tiers of guns (forty-eight pounders, as we were told) and resembles a huge fhip of ftone, with port-holes, alfo like thofe of a fhip fhut in; and, as well as we could perceive, covered with copper: having ftood in close along this ftupendous ftructure, we made away for the first Cone, and paffed it; the fecond is the one upon which the king of France ftationed himself to fee a Cone launched and funk; the Cone on which he stood the fea and weather has destroyed; by the time we were near to it, the tide had fallen, and the wreck of it looked shocking; and not lefs fo, for the huge broken ruins of the floor of cement. with which it had been covered; on one piece of which remained, unbroken, the infcription relative to the king's vifit, and the purport of it.

We paffed the third, the tide running fo hard, the men had much ado to make head against it; we got in

between

between the third and fourth, founding our way, left we should strike upon the Digue between: we had, how ever, three or four feet-water upon the whole, but we could plainly fee the Digue at bottom, and difcern that it was overgrown with weed, glutinous and thriving, and looked of a fort of confitence that, to us Englishmen, was a threat of durability. We hauled in upon the fourth, and mounted it by the ladder on the fide: ftones had either been thrown out, or else it never had been filled; for, about eight or nine feet from the top, was a void space : the workmen, who were to cur it down, were fitting upon the rugged ftones at their miferable dinner; W-walked round the edge of the Cone; but the heighth from the water, and the rapidity of the current, were too much for Cand me to look upon, without our heads turning giddy; we, therefore, contented ourselves with fitting on the fide by the ladder: this machine is certainly a prodigious one; and, confidering it as the inftrument of an attempt to combat and control one of the uniform and teady operations of nature, it impreffed me now with a very different idea than when I first faw the Cones from the hill.

Of thofe that have been funk, the eight next to Ifle Pelée have been least affected by the sea, and may be faid to have almost entirely refifted it, the fecond one excepted; and that, even in its fallen ftate, is not without confiderable effect in repelling the force of the waves; but, however, they might have at length anfwered the wifhed-for purpose, had the French perfevered in finking new ones, in the place of fuch as might, from time to time, have been deftroyed: the intention of forming a harbour by their means is now entirely relinquished; those remaining are cutting down; and, if a harbour is effected at all, it is to be by the Digue, or bank,

which is carrying on across what was meant to have been the middle channel; and to the weftward, as far as within one thousand and fixty-fix yards of Querqueville Point, which will leave a fecond entrance equal with the firft, between Ifle Pelée and the eaftermoft Cone.

We had hired a boat of not more than twelve tons to carry us to this place; and, about three o'clock, we went aboard her, near the two seventy-four gun-fhips which lay in the harbour: we dined, and were wishing to be under way; but the tide, not ebbing till near nine o'clock, it gave me time to gratify my inclination of feeing Cherbourg to the latest minute poffible; I, therefore, went athore in the fkiff, and walked once more over the town.

The fame tumultuous difpofition ftill fhewed itfelf; the populace were affembled as before; few only of them had fire-arms, the reft were armed with fhort pikes, axes, pole-axes, common hatchets, swords of a dozen different forts, and various other weapons; in fhort, every thing that a man could fnatch up. It is hardly credible to any one who has ever feen the French military, that a body of French foldiers fhould have marching by their fides a body of Bourgeois of all forts and fizes, and armed as above mentioned: yet fo it was; thus they were marfhalled, and thus they marched, haud paffibus equis, however, as you may imagine.

A few words more will conclude this long epiftle, but I cannot clofe it, without doing the juftice to the French, to fay, that the works at Cherbourg, fhew an enlargement of mind that does them the very higheft honour as a nation, and as men.-The conception is vaft and grand; and, if it be confidered that it is highly improbable, if not even impoflible, that the full force and effect, propofed from the work, thould re fult in the time of the prefent gene