The inhabitants are far
from being famed for good usage to strangers, but, on the contrary,
are blamed for being extravagant in their reckonings in the public-
houses, which has not a little encouraged the setting up of sloops,
which they now call passage boats, to Holland, to go directly from
the River Thames; this, though it may be something the longer
passage, yet as they are said to be more obliging to passengers and
more reasonable in the expense, and, as some say, also, the vessels
are better sea boats, has been the reason why so many passengers do
not go or come by the way of Harwich as formerly were wont to do;
insomuch that the stage coaches between this place and London,
which ordinarily went twice or three times a week, are now entirely
laid down, and the passengers are left to hire coaches on purpose,
take post-horses, or hire horses to Colchester, as they find most
convenient.
The account of a petrifying quality in the earth here, though some
will have it to be in the water of a spring hard by, is very
strange. They boast that their town is walled and their streets
paved with clay, and yet that one is as strong and the other as
clean as those that are built or paved with stone. The fact is
indeed true, for there is a sort of clay in the cliff, between the
town and the Beacon Hill adjoining, which, when it falls down into
the sea, where it is beaten with the waves and the weather, turns
gradually into stone.
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