not always relish. I am very much struck with the vein of melancholy, which assumes almost a poetical tone in some of the things they say. Did I tell you of that poor old decrepid creature Dorcas, who came to beg some sugar of me the other day? saying, as she took up my watch from the table and looked at it, "Ah! I need not look at this; I have almost done with time!" Was not that striking from such a poor old ignorant crone?

DEAR E --This is the fourth day that I have had a "gang" of lads working in the woods for me after their task hours for pay; you can not think how zealous and energetic they are; I dare say the novelty of the process pleases them almost as much as the money they earn. I must say they quite deserve their small wages.

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Last night I received a present from Mrs. F drum-fish, which animal I had never beheld before, and which seemed to me first cousin to the great Leviathan. It is to be eaten, and is certainly the biggest fish food I ever saw; however, every thing is in proportion, and the prawns that came with it are upon a similarly extensive scale; this magnificent piscatorial bounty was accompanied by a profusion of Hamilton green peas, really a munificent supply.

I went out early after breakfast with Jack hunting for new paths; we rode all along the road by Jones's Creek, and most beautiful it was. We skirted the plantation. burial-ground, and a dismal place it looked; the cattle trampling over it in every direction, except where Mr. Khad had an inclosure put up round the graves of two white men who had worked on the estate. They were strangers, and of course utterly indifferent to the people here; but by virtue of their white skins, their resting-place was protected from the hoofs of the cattle, while

the parents and children, wives, husbands, brothers and sisters, of the poor slaves, sleeping beside them, might see the graves of those they loved trampled upon and browsed over, desecrated and defiled, from morning till night. There is something intolerably cruel in this disdainful denial of a common humanity pursuing these wretches even when they are hid beneath the earth.

The day was exquisitely beautiful, and I explored a new wood path, and found it all strewed with a lovely wild flower not much unlike a primrose. I spent the afternoon at home. I dread going out twice a day now, on account of the heat and the sand-flies. While I was sitting by the window, Abraham, our cook, went by with some most revolting-looking "raw material" (part, I think, of the interior of the monstrous drum-fish of which I have told you). I asked him, with considerable disgust, what he was going to do with it; he replied, "Oh! we colored people eat it, missis." Said I, "Why do you say we colored people ?". "Because, missis, white people won't touch what we too glad of." "That," said I, "is because you are poor, and do not often have meat to eat, not because you are colored, Abraham; rich white folks will not touch what poor white folks are too glad of; it has nothing in the world to do with color; and if there were white people here worse off than you (amazing and inconceivable suggestion, I fear), they would be glad to eat what you perhaps would not touch." Profound pause of meditation on the part of Abraham, wound up by a considerate “Well, missis, I suppose so;" after which he departed with the horrid-looking offal.

To-day-Saturday-I took another ride of discovery round the fields by Jones's. I think I shall soon be able to survey this estate, I have ridden so carefully over it in every direction; but my rides are drawing to a close, and even were I to remain here this must be the case, unless

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I got up and rode under the stars in the cool of the night. This afternoon I was obliged to drive up to St. Annie's: I had promised the people several times that I would do So. I went after dinner and as late as I could, and found very considerable improvement in the whole condition of the place; the houses had all been swept, and some of them actually scoured. The children were all quite tolerably clean; they had put slats across all their windows, and little chicken-gates to the doors to keep out the poultry. There was a poor woman lying in one of the cabins in a wretched condition. She begged for a bandage, but I do not see of what great use that can be to her, as long as she has to hoe in the fields so many hours a day, which I can not prevent.

Returning home, Israel undertook to pilot me across the cotton-fields into the pine land; and a more excruciating process than being dragged over that very uneven surface in that wood-wagon without springs I did never endure, mitigated and soothed though it was by the literally fascinating account my charioteer gave me of the rattlesnakes with which the place we drove through becomes infested as the heat increases. I can not say that his description of them, though more demonstrative as far as regarded his own horror of them, was really worse than that which Mr. G was giving me of them yesterday. He said they were very numerous, and were found in every direction all over the plantation, but that they did not become really vicious until quite late in the summer; until then, it appears that they generally endeavor to make off if one meets them, but during the intense heats of the latter part of July and August they never think of escaping, but at any sight or sound which they may consider inimical they instantly coil themselves for a spring. The most intolerable proceeding on their part, however, that he described, was their getting up into the trees, and

either coiling themselves in or depending from the branches. There is something too revolting in the idea of serpents looking down upon one from the shade of the trees to which one may betake one's self for shelter in the dreadful heat of the Southern midsummer; decidedly I do not think the dog-days would be pleasant here. The moccasin snake, which is nearly as deadly as the rattlesnake, abounds all over the island.

In the evening I had a visit from Mr. C and Mr. B—, who officiates to-morrow at our small island church. The conversation I had with these gentlemen was sad enough. They seem good, and kind, and amiable men, and I have no doubt are conscientious in their capacity of slaveholders; but to one who has lived outside this dreadful atmosphere, the whole tone of their discourse has a morally muffled sound, which one must hear to be able to conceive. Mr. B told me that the people on this plantation not going to church was the result of a positive order from Mr. K—, who had peremptorily forbidden their doing so, and of course to have infringed that order would have been to incur severe corporal chastisement. Bishop B―, it seems, had advised that there should be periodical preaching on the plantations, which, said Mr. B—, would have obviated any necessity for the people of different estates congregating at any given point at stated times, which might perhaps be objectionable, and at the same time would meet the reproach which was now beginning to be directed toward Southern planters as a class, of neglecting the eternal interest of their dependents. But Mr. Khad equally objected to this. He seems to have held religious teaching a mighty dangerous thing-and how right he was! I have met with conventional cowardice of various shades and shapes in various societies that I have lived in, but any thing like the pervading timidity of tone which I

find here on all subjects, but, above all, on that of the condition of the slaves, I have never dreamed of. Truly slavery begets slavery, and the perpetual state of suspicion and apprehension of the slaveholders is a very handsome offset, to say the least of it, against the fetters and the lash of the slaves. Poor people, one and all, but especially poor oppressors of the oppressed! The attitude of these men is really pitiable; they profess (perhaps some of them strive to do so indeed) to consult the best interests of their slaves, and yet shrink back terrified from the approach of the slightest intellectual or moral improvement which might modify their degraded and miserable existence. I do pity these deplorable servants of two masters more than any human beings I have ever seen-more than their own slaves a thousand times!

To-day is Sunday, and I have been to the little church on the island. It is the second time since I came down to the South that I have been to a place of worship. A curious little incident prefaced my going thither this morning. I had desired Israel to get my horse ready and himself to accompany me, as I meant to ride to church; and you can not imagine any thing droller than his horror and dismay when he at length comprehended that my purpose was to attend divine service in my riding-habit. I asked him what was the trouble; for, though I saw something was creating a dreadful convulsion in his mind, I had no idea what it was till he told me, adding that he had never seen such a thing on St. Simon's in his life-as who should say, such a thing was never seen in Hyde Park or the Tuileries before. You may imagine my amusement; but presently I was destined to shock something much more serious than poor Israel's sense of les convénances et bienséances, and it was not without something of an effort that I made up my mind to do so. I was standing at the open window speaking to him about