eamy
stillness seemed creeping over the world and into my spirit, as the canoe
just tilted against the steps that led to the wharf, raised by the scarce
perceptible heaving of the water. A melancholy, monotonous boat-horn
sounded from a distance up the stream, and presently, floating slowly down
with the current, huge, shapeless, black relieved against the sky, came
one of those rough barges piled with cotton, called, hereabouts, Ocone
boxes. The vessel itself is really nothing but a monstrous square box,
made of rough planks, put together in the roughest manner possible to
attain the necessary object of keeping the cotton dry. Upon this great
tray are piled the swollen apoplectic looking cotton bags, to the height
of ten, twelve, and fourteen feet. This huge water-waggon floats lazily
down the river, from the upper country to Darien. They are flat bottomed,
and, of course, draw little water. The stream from whence they are named
is an up country river, which, by its junction with the Ocmulgee, forms
the Altamaha. Here at least, you perceive the Indian names remain, and
long may they do so, for they seem to me to become the very character of
the streams and mountains they indicate, and are indeed significant to the
learned in savage tongues, which is more than can be said of such titles
as Jones's Creek, Onion Creek, &c. These Ocone boxes are broken up at
Darien, where the cotton is shipped either for the Savannah, Charleston
or Liverpool markets, and the timber, of which they are constructed,
sold.

We rowed the doctor over to see some of his patients on the island, and
before his departure a most animated discussion took place upon the
subject of the President of the United States, his talents,
qualifications, opinions, above all, his views with regard to the slave
system. Mr. ----, who you know is no abolitionist, and is a very devoted
Van Buren man, maintained with great warmth the President's
straight-forwardness, and his evident and expressed intention of
protecting the rights of the South. The doctor, on the other hand, quoted
a certain speech of the President's, upon the question of abolishing
slavery in the district of Columbia, which his fears interpreted into a
mere evasion of the matter, and an indication that, at some future period,
he (Mr. Van Buren), might take a different view of the subject. I confess,
for my own part, that if the doctor quoted the speech right, and if the
President is not an honest man