From Thomas Waters Sr. to his wife Elizabeth Waters (October 21, 1824)

[Thomas Waters.R.M., presumably to his wife]

[This tallies with the diary entry for 21st October 1824; someone in the past has pencilled in a heading, “English Bay Ascension Oct 21st 1824”]

We arrived at Assention 21st Oct. the Colonel and his Officers dined on board the same day with the Commodore myself and some of my messmates were of the dinner party —

The next day at 5’0’Clock in the morning the Commodore attended by myself & other Officers went on shore took a cup of cocoa with the Colonel & proceeded to the Green Mountain, the Commodore & his Chaplain on donkeys the Colonel & the rest of us on foot. in Smock frocks & duck trousers & plated hats made of the leaves of cabbage trees with a long staff in our hands one or two had a fowling piece we wouned round the red mountain. we visited one of the springs it affords 142 Qts in 24 hours. it is produced by the constant dripping of water from the edges of a kind of slate from the side of the Green Mountain. the mountain is supplied from occasional showers & very frequent morning dews & thus the water is collected by means of a shute into iron tamks [tanks]

Afterwards we visited the Governor’s Villa at the upper part of the mountain, we found it neat but by no means gaudy it had no superfluous ornament that I could perceive. it consisted of a suite of 3 rooms on the ground floor lodging room, sitting room & hall neither papered nor scarcely painted, the detached buildings consist of a kitchen, stables, places for goats – poultry, pigs etc – and a room built by the Artillery Officer for himself besides a cut into the mountain the bowels of which seems to consist of strater of cinders & stone, had forgot to tell you that after walking 5 or 6 miles over mountains & precipices winding this way & that way & the other way in order to get at the top without breaking our necks, the Maidstone’s Officers feel particularly obliged to Col.Nicholls & his Officers for their kind attentions