Dr. Alexander Hamilton's Itinerarium chronicles his journey from Maryland to Maine and back in 1744. According to his biographer, this Scottish-born Annapolis physician was a rarity among contemporary observers - a "truthful traveller!" He took a two week side trip up the Hudson to Albany. The excerpts printed below shed light on early Albany and its people!

[51]  Mr. M_____s [Milne] read a treatise upon microscopes and wanted me to sit and hear him, which I did, tho' with little relish, the piece being trite and vulgar, and tiresome to one who had seen Leewenhoek and some of the best hands upon that subject. I soon found M____ls [Milne's] ignorance of the thing, for as he read he seemed to be in a kind of surprize  [53]  att every little trite observation of the author's. I found him an intire stranger to the mathematicks, so as that he know not the difference betwixt a cone and a pyramid, a cylinder and a prysm. He had studied a year att Leyden under Boerhaave, even after he had entered into holy orders. He had once wore a souldier's livery, was very whimisicall about affairs relating to farming in so much that he had spent a deal of money in projects that way but reaped as little profit as projectors commonly do. I was told by a gentleman that knew him that formerly he had been an immoderate drinker so as to expose himself by it, but now he was so much reformed as to drink no liquor but water. In some parts of learning, such as the languages, he seemed pritty well versed. He could talk Latine and French very well and read the Greek authors, and I was told that he spoke the Dutch to perfection. He enquired of me concerning Parson C____se of Maryland, but I could not find out which of the C____ses it was. He told me had had once given him a hearty horsewhipping for some rude language he gave him in a theologicall dispute which they had. I was informed by him that Morgan, the philosopher and mathematician whom I had seen att Kingstown, was his curate>.

[61]We set off in the canoes att nine a clock and saw Albany att a distance. We landed upon an island belonging to Mr. M_____s [Milne], upon which there was fine grass of different sorts and very good crops of wheat and pease

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