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of trees and winding through a country in the very highest
state of cultivation. At short intervals villages and de-
tached houses present themselves, and give a pleasing
diversity to the Scene.

In this manner we arrived at
Bruges, where we remained only about half an hour
before we again proceeded in our barges; too short a
time to form any correct idea of so considerable a
place

At day light after having proceeded the
whole night in our tranquil course we found ourselves
arrived at Ghent, where but a few months before that
treaty was concluded which by putting an end to the
War beyond the Atlantic, enabled our Government
happily to recall us from a country which served only
to remind us of the superiority of every other. The duration
and severity of the Canadian Winters I found to be too
great for me – indeed I suffered exceeding from the one
it was my ill fortune to spend in Quebec.

But I for-
get I am returning to the Saint Lawrence when I should
be conducting you my dear Mother, over the Scheld by one
of the three hundred bridges which are at Ghent
This is a beautiful Town traversed in various parts by Canals
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were always to have been in the custody of three of the principal Officers of
State, so that the doors could be never opened without their concurrence –

But my dear Mother will imagine I intend to en
-tomb her in the Abbey – We will hasten out of it, and imagine ourselves
at a small village about a mile distant where on arriving we were
directed to quarter ourselves – It consists chiefly of the country houses of some
of the wealthy citizens of Paris – with grounds and gardens elegantly laid
out, together with the houses themselves little inferior to palaces – yet amidst
all this magnificence we could not find an entire chair on which to
sit, or of an infinity of fine glasses a fragment large enough to regard
one self in. On the approach of the hostile forces the inhabitants for the
most part retired into the City and the Prussian and other troops bearing
too deeply in mind the devastations committed by the French in their
territories, were determined to avenge themselves by the destruction
of every thing that it was possible for them to destroy – Suppose my dear Mother
a Company of uncontrolled and licentious soldiers in our happy house at
Parramatta – How soon would every object which either time, or some other cause
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