STORES OF THE RETAIL DEALERS.
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coloured pork, may be met with, which, carnivorous as it must be allowed we all are, few like their eyes to dwell upon ; while, on the other side, gown-pieces, and " blue checks," with other "odds and ends,'' claim the frequenters' attention. Next to these small shops, come the stores of the retail provision dealers, which are upon a larger scale, and of course better supplied with goods. Then there are the grog shops, as they are termed, where to the heterogeneous mass of eatables, crockery, and tin-ware, is added the more exciting articles of brandy, rum, gin, porter, wine, &c. ; and where of an evening, amid fumes of every description, (from Yanky cheese to Virginia tobacco,) and dim smoky oil lamps, parties of soldiers, sailors, dingy-looking blacks, and unfortunate females—ay I and men of better rank of life, who ought to blush to be found in such places—love to congregate, and barter health and money, for dirty goblets of those fiery liquids. When passing, in an evening, these store-houses for crime, they forcibly bring to my mind thoughts of Pandemonium. The dusky lamps, at one moment sending forth their long flaming tongues, the next, only serving to make darkness visible ; the crowds of negroes, with their gleaming eyes and glittering teeth, presenting the appearance of so many attending demons ; the groups of white soldiers or sailors, looking more pallid in the flickering lamp-light, and greedily quaffing the deleterious fluid, which, sooner or later, preys upon their very vitals—and then the various sounds of cursing and 'quarrelling, idiotic laughter, discordant singing, and incoherent talking, as the miserable frequenters arrive at the different stages of intoxication,—conspire to render it more like a council-chamber of tormented spirits, than the selfchosen place of amusement of rational creatures. The next grade of these places of merchandise are, the merchants' stores or warehouses, with their attached lumberyards. These are, in most instances, large, dismal-looking buildings, whose unwashed rafters afford safe protection to