on for
free ventilation; and I always look at these elaborate adornments of
sea-beds as ingenious and elegant incentives to sea-sickness, graceful
emetics in themselves, all provocation from the water set aside. The
captain's wife and ourselves were the only passengers; and, after a
most delightful walk on deck in the afternoon, and comfortable tea, we
retired for the night, and did not wake till we bumped on the Charleston
bar on the morning of Christmas-day.

The _William Seabrook_, the boat which is to convey us from hence to
Savannah, only goes once a week.... This unfrequent communication
between the principal cities of the great Southern States is rather a
curious contrast to the almost unintermitting intercourse which goes on
between the northern towns. The boat itself, too, is a species of small
monopoly, being built and chiefly used for the convenience of certain
wealthy planters residing on Edisto Island, a small insulated tract
between Charleston and Savannah, where the finest cotton that is raised
in this country grows. This city is the oldest I have yet seen in
America--I should think it must be the oldest in it. I cannot say that
the first impression produced by the wharf at which we landed, or the
streets we drove through in reaching our hotel, was particularly lively.
Rickety, dark, dirty, tumble-down streets and warehouses, with every now
and then a mansion of loftier pretensions, but equally neglected and
ruinous in its appearance, would probably not have been objects of
special admiration to many people on this side the water; but I belong
to that infirm, decrepit, bedridden old country, England, and must
acknowledge, with a blush for the stupidity of the prejudice, that it is
so very long since I have seen anything old, that the lower streets of
Charleston, in all their dinginess and decay, were a refreshment and a
rest to my spirit.

I have had a perfect red-brick-and-white-board fever ever since I came
to this country; and once more to see a house which looks as if it had
stood long enough to get warmed through, is a balm to my senses,
oppressed with newness. Boston had two or three fine old
dwelling-houses, with antique gardens and old-fashioned court-yards; but
they have come down to the dust before the improving spirit of the age.
One would think, that after ten years a house gets weak in the knees.
Perhaps these houses do; but I have lodged under roof-trees that have
stood hundreds of years,