obacco, and that, too, in a most disgusting and disagreeable way, if
one way can be more disgusting than another. They carry habitually a
small stick, like the implement for cleaning the teeth, usually known in
England by the name of a root,--this they thrust away in their glove, or
their garter-string, and, whenever occasion offers, plunge it into a
snuff-box, and begin chewing it. The practice is so common that the
proffer of the snuff-box, and its passing from hand to hand, is the
usual civility of a morning visit among the country-people; and I was
not a little amused at hearing the gentlemen who were with us describe
the process as they witnessed it in their visit to a miserable
farm-house across the fields, whither they went to try to obtain
something to eat.

It was now becoming dark, and the male members of our caravan held
council round a pine fire as to what course had better be adopted for
sheltering themselves and us during the night, which we seemed destined
to pass in the woods. After some debate, it was recollected that one
Colonel ----, a man of some standing in that neighborhood, had a farm
about a mile distant, immediately upon the line of the railroad; and
thither it was determined we should all repair, and ask quarters for the
night. Fortunately, an empty truck stood at hand upon the iron road, and
to this the luggage and the women and children of the party, were
transferred. A number of negroes, who were loitering about, were pressed
into the service, and pushed it along; and the gentlemen, walking,
brought up the rear. I don't know that I ever in my life felt so
completely desolate as during that half-hour's slow progress. We sat
cowering among the trunks, my faithful Margery and I, each with a baby
in our arms, sheltering ourselves and our poor little burthens from the
bleak northern wind that whistled over us.

The last embers of daylight were dying out in dusky red streaks along
the horizon, and the dreary waste around us looked like the very shaggy
edge of all creation. The men who pushed us along encouraged each other
with wild shouts and yells, and every now and then their labor was one
of no little danger, as well as difficulty,--for the road crossed one or
two deep ravines and morasses at a considerable height, and, as it was
not completed, and nothing but the iron rails were laid across piles
driven into these places, it became a service of considerable risk to
run along these narrow ledg