officers were each armed with a cutlass and a brace of pistols.
The other Custom-house officers were a class of men, half-landsman, half-sailor. Their duty was to attend at the local Custom-house during the day, to be ready for the performance of any official duty that might be casually required-such as the overhauling a passenger's luggage, who might be landed from a homeward-bound ship. During the night a portion of them would man a galley, and would leisurely proceed therein along the coast, watching if perchance a cargo should be ventured to be run. If they should run against a transaction going on, things were generally taken pretty quietly, and they found it quite as convenient, and more profitable, not to see anything of the kind going on, as to see it ;` in fact, it would not unfrequently happen that the smugglers would give the Custom-house officers a few tubs of spirits if they would let the rest go free, so that it is no wonder that the Custom-house officers were easy-going men, and did not sometimes see smuggled goods till they tumbled over them. I am not aware of any casualty happening to life or limb under the regime of the Custom-house officers. I recollect, when a lad, seeing one of the Custom-house officers grinding his cutlass at a smith's shop where my father worked ; a great deal of chaff flew about between them, and I remember my father telling him that on a -
