the place
of the kindred and friends from whom I am so widely sundered....

That the winter in Georgia, whither we are going immediately, may be
beneficial to the invalid member of our party, is the only pleasant
anticipation with which I set my face towards a part of the country
where the whole manner of existence is repugnant to my feelings, and
where the common comforts of life are so little known, that we are
obliged to ship a freight of necessary articles of food, for our use
while we are on the plantation.

Wheaten bread is unknown, meal made of the Indian corn being alone used
there: and though the provision Nature has furnished, in the shape of
game, abounds, the only meat, properly so called, which can be procured
there, is shipped in barrels (salted, of course) from the North.

Society, or the shadow of it, is not to be dreamt of; and our residence,
as far as I can learn, is to be a half-furnished house in the midst of
rice-swamps, where our habitual company will be our slaves, and our
occasional visitors an alligator or two from the Altamaha.

Catharine Sedgwick is spending the winter in Lenox. She and Mr. and Mrs.
R---- and Kate are going to Europe in the spring; and if I should return
alive from Slavery, perhaps I may go with them. Pray do not fail to let
me know everything you may hear or see of my sister.... I was at Lenox
when your parcel for Catharine Sedgwick arrived. We were all enchanted
with the engraving from the German picture of the "Sick Counsellor."

F. A. B.

DEAREST HARRIET,

On Friday morning we started from Philadelphia, by railroad, for
Baltimore. It is a curious fact enough, that half the routes that are
traveled in America are either temporary or unfinished,--one reason,
among several, for the multitudinous accidents which befall wayfarers.
At the very outset of our journey, and within scarce a mile of
Philadelphia, we crossed the Schuylkill, over a bridge, one of the
principal piers of which is yet incomplete, and the whole building (a
covered wooden one, of handsome dimensions) filled with workmen, yet
occupied about its construction. But the Americans are impetuous in the
way of improvement, and have all the impatience of children about the
trying of a new thing, often greatly retarding their own progress by
hurrying unduly the completion of their works, or using them in a
perilous state of incompleteness. Our ro