The daily allowance of the British government to our prisoners, is one pound of bread, one pound of beef, and one gill of peas. Over and above this we received from the American agent a sufficiency of coffee, sugar, potatoes, and _tobacco_. The first may be called the bare necessaries of life, but the latter contribute much to its comfortable enjoyment. Whether the British government ought not to have found the whole, I am not prepared to determine; but certainly, before this addition from our own agent, our men complained bitterly: and it is a fact, that the agent here more than once detained tobacco, sent as a present to us from our agent at Boston.
In justice to Mr. Miller, the British agent, I ought to record that he paid great attention to the cleanliness of the prison, and to the clothes of the men; and I must, at the same time, say that some of our men were very dirty, lazy fellows, that required constantly spurring up to keep them from being offensive. This indolent and careless disposition was observed to be chiefly among those who had been formerly intemperate; they felt the loss of their beloved stimulus, their spirits sunk, and they had rather lay down and rot, and die, than exert themselves. There were a few who seemed to be like hogs, innately dirty, and who had rather lie dirty than clean. Mr. Miller had therefore great merit in compelling these men to follow the rules prescribed to the whole prison. For this he had the thanks of every considerate American.
It was a common remark, that the most indolent and most slovenly men were the most vicious; and a dirty external was a pretty sure indication of a depraved mind. Such as would not conform to the rules of cleanliness were committed to the _black hole_, which was under the prison, and divided into solitary cells. The agent had the power of confining a prisoner in one of these dungeons during ten days. It is to the credit of our seamen to remark, that they co-operated with the agent most heartily in whatever tended to preserve the cleanliness of their persons, and they applauded the confinement of such as were disinclined to follow the salutary rules of the prison.
We were one day not a little shocked by the arrival of a number of American soldiers who were entrapped and taken with Colonel _Boestler_, in Upper Canada. They exhibited a picture of starvation, misery, woe, and despair. Their miserable condition called forth our sympathy and compassion, and I may add, excited our resentment against the authors of their distress. These unfortunate landsmen had never been used to "rough it" like sailors, but had lived the easy life of farmers and mechanics. Some of them had never experienced the hardships of a soldier's life, but were raw, inexperienced militia men. They were taken at some creek between Fort George and Little York, by the British and their allies the Indians, who stripped them of most of their clothing, and then wore them down by very long and harrassing marches; first to Montreal, and then to Quebec; and soon after crowded them on board transports, like negroes in a Guinea ship, where some suffered a lingering death, and others merely escaped it. It appears from their account, and from every other account, that the treatment of these poor fellows at their capture, and on their march, and more especially _on board the transports from Quebec to Halifax_, was barbarous in the extreme, and highly disgraceful to the British name and nation.
