Miles river was broad, and its oyster fishing{145} grounds were extensive; and the fishermen were out, often, all day, and a part of the night, during autumn, winter and spring.

This exposure was an excuse for carrying with them, in considerable quanties( sic), spirituous liquors, the then supposed best antidote for cold.

Each canoe was supplied with its jug of rum; and tippling, among this class of the citizens of St.Michael's, became general.

This drinking habit, in an ignorant population, fostered coarseness, vulgarity and an indolent disregard for the social improvement of the place, so that it was admitted, by the few sober, thinking people who remained there, that St.Michael's had become a very _unsaintly_, as well as unsightly place, before I went there to reside.
I left Baltimore for St.Michael's in the month of March, 1833.

I know the year, because it was the one succeeding the first cholera in Baltimore, and was the year, also, of that strange phenomenon, when the heavens seemed about to part with its starry train.