to speak or
understand a word of the language of the country, friendless, and left
without money, they have languished three months in a loathsome jail,
without any other sustenance, a great part of the time, than what could
be procured for three sous a day, which have been furnished them to
prevent their perishing.

* A hogshead of tobacco weighs generally about one thousand
pounds, English, equal to nine hundred and seventeen pounds
French. The seven hogsheads he sailed with, would therefore
weigh, according to this estimate, six thousand four hundred
and twenty-three pounds. They actually weighed more on the
first essay. When afterwards weighed at Landivisiau, they
had lost eighty-four pounds on being carried into a drier
air. Perhaps, too, a difference of weights may have entered
into this apparent loss.

They have been made to understand that a criminal process is going on
against them under two heads. 1. As having sold tobacco in contraband;
and 2., as having entered a port of France in a vessel of less than
thirty tons' burthen. In support of the first charge, they understand
that the circumstance is relied on, of their having been seen off the
coast by the _employes des Fermes_, one or two days. They acknowledge
they may have been so seen while beating off Pont Duval, till they could
get a pilot, while entering that port, and again going round from
thence to the road of the Isle de Bas. The reasons for this have been
explained. They further add, that all the time they were at Pont Duval
they had a King's officer on board, from whom, as well as from their
pilot, and the captain, by whose advise they left that port for the
Isle de Bas, information can be obtained by their accusers (who are not
imprisoned) of the true motives for that measure. It is said to be
urged also, that there was found in their vessel some loose tobacco in
a blanket, which excites a suspicion that they had been selling tobacco.
When they were stowing their loading, they broke a hogshead, as is
always necessary, and is always done, to fill up the stowage, and to
consolidate and keep the whole mass firm and in place. The loose tobacco
which had come out of the broken hogshead, they re-packed in bags:
but in the course of the distress of their disastrous voyage, they
had employed these bags, as they had done every thing else of the same
nature, in mending their sails. The condition of their sails