he head of our boat leaked
through to us, so that we were almost as wet as he. In this manner we
lay all night, with very little rest; but the wind abating the next
day, we made a shift to reach Amboy before night, having been thirty
hours on the water, without victuals, or any drink but a bottle of
filthy rum, the water we sailed on being salt.
In the evening I found myself very feverish, and went in to bed; but,
having read somewhere that cold water, drunk plentifully, was good for
a fever, I followed the prescription, sweat plentifully most of the
night, my fever left me, and in the morning, crossing the ferry, I
proceeded on my journey on foot, having fifty miles to Burlington,
where I was told I should find boats that would carry me the rest of
the way to Philadelphia.
It rained very hard all the day. I was thoroughly soaked, and by noon
a good deal tired, so I stopped at a poor inn, where I stayed all
night, beginning now to wish that I had never left home. I cut so
miserable a figure, too, that I found, by the questions asked me, I
was suspected to be some runaway servant and in danger of being taken
up on that suspicion. However, I proceeded the next day, and got in
the evening to an inn, within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept
by one Dr. Brown. He entered into conversation with me while I took
some refreshment, and finding I had read a little, became very
sociable and friendly. Our acquaintance continued as long as he lived.
He had been, I imagine, an itinerant doctor, for there was no town in
England, or country in Europe, of which he could not give a very
particular account. He had some letters, and was ingenious, but much
of an unbeliever, and wickedly undertook, some years after, to
travesty the Bible in doggerel verse, as Cotton had done Virgil. By
this means he set many of the facts in a very ridiculous light, and
might have hurt weak minds if his work had been published; but it
never was.
At his house I lay that night, and the next morning reached
Burlington, but had the mortification to find that the regular boats
were gone a little before my coming, and no other expected to go
before Tuesday, this being Saturday; wherefore I returned to an old
woman in the town of whom I had bought gingerbread to eat on the
water, and asked her advice. She invited me to lodge at her house till
a passage by water should offer; and, being tired with my foot
traveling, I accepted the invitation. She, understa
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