Leaving the square, I passed up King-street, at the top of which was my
intended boarding-house. The shops in this fashionable resort are fitted
out in good style, and the goods are of the best description. After
sunset the streets are often lined with carriages. The city lies flat,
like the surrounding country, and, owing to this, is insalubrious;
stagnant water collects in the cellars of the houses, and engenders a
poisonous vapour, which is a fertile source of those destructive
epidemics, that, combined with other causes, are annually decimating the
white population of the south of the American continent in all parts.
At the top of King-street, facing you as you advance, is a large
Protestant episcopal church. I went there to worship on the following
Sunday, but was obliged to leave the building, there being, it was
stated by the apparitor, no accommodation for strangers, a piece of
illiberality that I considered very much in keeping with the
slave-holding opinions of the worshippers who attend it. This want of
politeness I was not, however, surprised at, for it is notorious, as has
been before observed by an able writer, that, excepting the Church of
Rome, "the members of the unestablished Church of England--the
Protestant Episcopalian, are the most bigotted, sectarian, and
illiberal, in the United States of America.
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