ves, that
bind the tawny, rattling sedges together, and make summer bowers for the
alligators and snakes which abound and disport themselves here in the
hot season.

I am wrong in saying that there are no trees on the island, though there
are as bad as none now. They formerly had a great number of magnificent
orange-trees, that were all destroyed by an unusually severe winter;
there are a few left, however, which bear most excellent oranges....

BUTLER'S ISLAND, January 8th, 1839.
DEAREST HARRIET,

The stars are shining like one vast incrustation of diamonds; and though
'tis the 8th of January, I have been out with bare neck and arms,
standing on the brink of the Altamaha, and seeking relief from the
oppressive heat of the house. I am here, with the children, in the midst
of our slaves; and it seems to me, as I look over these wild wastes and
waters, as though I were standing on the outer edge of creation. That
this is not absolutely the case, however, or that, if it is,
civilization in some forms has preceded us hither, is abundantly proved
by the sights and sounds of busy traffic, labor, and mechanical
industry, which, encountered in this region (still really half a
wilderness), produce an impression of the most curiously anomalous
existence you can imagine.

Right and left, as the eye follows the broad and brimming surface of
this vast body of turbid water, it rests on nothing but low swamp lands,
where the rattling sedges, like a tawny forest of reeds, make warm
winter shelters for the snakes and alligators, which the summer sun will
lure in scores from their lurking-places; or hoary woods, upon whose
straggling upper boughs, all hung with gray mosses like disheveled hair,
the bald-headed eagle stoops from the sky, and among whose undergrowth
of varnished evergreens the mocking-birds, even at this season, keep a
resounding jubilee. All this looks wild enough; and as the peculiar
orange light of the southern sunset falls upon the scene, I almost
expect to see the canoes of the red man shoot from the banks, which were
so lately the possession of his race alone. Immediately opposite to me,
however (only about a mile distant, the river and a swampy island
intervening), lies the little town of Darien, whose white gable-ended
warehouses, shining in the sun, recall the presence of the prevailing
European race, and we can hear distinctly the sound of the steam which
the steamboat