er Town, which is very hard and unwholsome. It curdles with
soap, gives a red colour to the meat that is boiled in it, and, when
drank by strangers, never fails to occasion pains in the stomach and
bowels; nay, sometimes produces dysenteries. In all appearance it is
impregnated with nitre, if not with something more mischievous: we know
that mundic, or pyrites, very often contains a proportion of arsenic,
mixed with sulphur, vitriol, and mercury. Perhaps it partakes of the
acid of some coal mine; for there are coal works in this district.
There is a well of purging water within a quarter of a mile of the
Upper Town, to which the inhabitants resort in the morning, as the
people of London go to the Dog-and-duck, in St. George's fields. There
is likewise a fountain of excellent water, hard by the cathedral, in
the Upper Town, from whence I am daily supplied at a small expence.
Some modern chemists affirm, that no saline chalybeate waters can
exist, except in the neighbourhood of coal damps; and that nothing can
be more mild, and gentle, and friendly to the constitution, than the
said damps: but I know that the place where I was bred stands upon a
zonic of coal; that the water which the inhabitants generally use is
hard and brackish; and that the people are remarkably subject to the
king's evil and consumption. These I would impute to the bad water,
impregnated with the vitriol and brine of coal, as there is nothing in
the constitution of the air that should render such distempers
endemial. That the air of Boulogne encourages putrefaction, appears
from the effect it has upon butcher's meat, which, though the season is
remarkably cold, we can hardly keep four-and-twenty hours in the
coolest part of the house.

Living here is pretty reasonable; and the markets are tolerably
supplied. The beef is neither fat nor firm; but very good for soup,
which is the only use the French make of it. The veal is not so white,
nor so well fed, as the English veal; but it is more juicy, and better
tasted. The mutton and pork are very good. We buy our poultry alive,
and fatten them at home. Here are excellent turkies, and no want of
game: the hares, in particular, are very large, juicy, and
high-flavoured. The best part of the fish caught on this coast is sent
post to Paris, in chasse-marines, by a company of contractors, like
those of Hastings in Sussex. Nevertheless, we have excellent soles,
skaite, flounders and whitings, and sometimes macka