The people of this town have the credit of inventing tar and feathers as a proper punishment for heresy. They first inflicted it on quakers and anabaptists.

New-London has a printing press, much exercised in the business of pamphlets, sermons, and newspapers. It is employed by the Governor and Company, and is the oldest and best in the colony. Newhaven, Hertford, and Norwich, also, have each a printing press; so that the people are plentifully supplied with news, politics, and polemical divinity.—​—A very extraordinary circumstance happened here in 1740. Mr. George Whitefield paid them a visit, and preached of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come, which roused them into the belief of an heaven and an hell. They became as children weaned and pliable as melted wax, and with great eagerness cried out, What shall we do to be saved? The preacher, then in the pulpit, thus answered them, “Repent—do violence to no man—part with your self-righteousness, your silk gowns, and laced petticoats—burn your ruffles, necklaces, jewels, rings, tinselled waistcoats, your morality and bishops books, this very night, or damnation will be your portion before the morning-dawn.” The people, rather thro’ fear than faith, instantly went out on

the common, and prepared for heaven, by burning all the above enumerated goods, excepting that of self-righteousness, which was exchanged for the preacher’s velvet breeches.—Vide Dr. Chancy.[33]

Groton, across the bay from New-London, resembles Battersea. The township is ten miles square, and forms four parishes, one of which is episcopal. This town was the residence of the valiant Sassacus, Sachem of the Pequod nation.

Stonington lies on Narraganset-Bay, is the east corner of Connecticut, and consists of three parishes. The township is 8 miles square.

Preston, on Quinnibaug river, forms three parishes, one of which is episcopal. The township is 8 miles square.

Norwich, on the Thames, 14 miles from the sea, is an half-shire with New-London. The town stands on a plain, one mile from Chelsea, or the Landing. Its best street is two miles long, and has good houses on both sides, five yards asunder from each other. In the centre is a common, of the size of Bloomsbury Square, in which stand a beautiful court-house, and a famous meeting with clocks, bells, and steeples. The township is fifteen miles square, and forms 13 parishes, one episcopal. Chelsea, or the Landing, resembles Dover. [Here land is sold at fifteen shillings sterling by the square foot.]—This town is famous for its trade; for iron-works, grist, paper, linseed, spinning and fulling mills; also for a furnace that makes stone ware.—​—Some peculiarities and curiosities here attract the notice of Europeans:—1, a bridge over Quinnibaug, 60 yards long, butted on two rocks, and geometrically supported; under which pass ships with all their sails standing:—2, the steeple of the grand meeting-house stands at the east end:—3, the inhabitants bury the dead with their feet to the west.—The following couplet was written by a traveller, on the steeple:

“They’re so perverse and opposite,

As if they built to God in spite.”

The reasons for the singular custom of burying the dead with their feet to the west, are two, and special: first, when Christ begins his millenarian reign, he will come from the west, and his saints will be in a ready