To my Father at his House.
SIR,
AFter my Obedience (at so great and vast a distance) has humbly saluted you and my good Mother, with the cordialest of my prayers, wishes, and desires to wait upon you, with the very best of their effectual devotion, wishing from the very Center of my Soul your flourishing and well-being here upon Earth, and your glorious and everlasting happiness in the World to Come. {93}
These lines (my dear Parents) come from that Son which by an irregular Fate was removed from his Native home, and after a five months dangerous passage, was landed on the remote Continent of America, in the Province of Mary-Land, where now by providence I reside. To give you the particulars of the several accidents that happened in our voyage by Sea, it would swell a Journal of some sheets, and therefore too large and tedious for a Letter: I think it therefore necessary to bind up the relation in Octavo, and give it you in short.
We had a blowing and dangerous passage of it, and for some dayes after I arrived, I was an absolute Copernicus, it being one main point of my moral Creed, to believe the World had a pair of long legs, and walked with the burthen of the Creation upon her back. For to tell you the very truth of it, for some dayes upon Land, after so long and tossing a passage, I was so giddy that I could hardly tread an even step; so that all things both above and below (that was in view) appeared to me like the Kentish Britains to William the Conqueror, in a moving posture.
Those few number of weeks since my arrival, has given me but little experience to write any thing large of the Country; only thus much I can say, and that not from any imaginary conjectures, but from an occular observation, That this Country of Mary-Land abounds in a flourishing variety of delightful Woods, {94} pleasant groves, lovely Springs, together with spacious Navigable Rivers and Creeks, it being a most helthful and pleasant situation, so far as my knowledge has yet had any view in it.
Herds of Deer are as numerous in this Province of Mary-Land, as Cuckolds can be in London, only their horns are not so well drest and tipt with silver as theirs are.
Here if the Devil had such a Vagary in his head as he had once among the Gadareans, he might drown a thousand head of Hogs and they’d ne’re be miss’d, for the very Woods of this Province swarms with them.
The Christian Inhabitant of this Province, as to the general, lives wonderful well and contented: The Government of this Province is by the loyalness of the people, and loving demeanor of the Proprietor and Governor of the same, kept in a continued peace and unity.
The Servant of this Province, which are stigmatiz’d for Slaves by the clappermouth jaws of the vulgar in England, live more like Freemen then the most Mechanick Apprentices in London, wanting for nothing that is convenient and necessary, and according to their several capacities, are extraordinary well used and respected. So leaving things here as I found them, and lest I should commit Sacriledge upon your more serious meditations, with the Tautologies of a long-winded Letter, I’le subscribe with a {95} heavenly Ejaculation to the God of Mercy to preserve you now and for evermore, Amen.