Basil Hall was in no way to be depended on, for that he not only slandered the Americans, but was himself, in other respects, a person of very equivocal morals.

One proof of this is given by a quotation of the following playful account of the distress occasioned by the want of a bell.

The commentator calls it an instance of "shocking coarseness." "One day I was rather late for breakfast, and as there was no water in my jug, I set off, post haste, half shaved, half dressed, and more than half vexed, in quest of water, like a seaman on short allowance, hunting for rivulets on some unknown coast.

I went up stairs, and down stairs, and in the course of my researches into half a dozen different apartments, might have stumbled on some lady's chamber, as the song says, which considering the plight I was in, would have been awkward enough." Another indication of this moral coarseness is pointed out in the passage where Capt.

Hall says, he never saw a flirtation all the time he was in the Union.
The charge of ingratitude also was echoed from mouth to mouth.
That he should himself bear testimony to the unvarying kindness of the reception he met with, and yet find fault with the country, was declared on all hands to be a proof of the most abominable ingratitude that it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive.