gar-cane, of which a small quantity grows on the island.
When I am most inclined to deplore the condition of the poor slaves on
these cotton and rice plantations, the far more intolerable existence and
harder labour of those employed on the sugar estates occurs to me,
sometimes producing the effect of a lower circle in Dante's 'Hell of
Horrors,' opening beneath the one where he seems to have reached the
climax of infernal punishment. You may have seen this vegetable, and must,
at any rate, I should think, be familiar with it by description. It is a
long green reed, like the stalk of the maize, or Indian corn, only it
shoots up to a much more considerable height, and has a consistent pith,
which, together with the rind itself, is extremely sweet. The principal
peculiarity of this growth, as perhaps you know, is that they are laid
horizontally in the earth when they are planted for propagation, and from
each of the notches or joints of the recumbent cane a young shoot is
produced at the germinating season.

A very curious and interesting circumstance to me just now in the
neighbourhood is the projection of a canal, to be called the Brunswick
Canal, which, by cutting through the lower part of the mainland, towards
the southern extremity of Great St. Simon's Island, is contemplated as a
probable and powerful means of improving the prosperity of the town of
Brunswick, by bringing it into immediate communication with the Atlantic.
The scheme, which I think I have mentioned to you before, is, I believe,
chiefly patronised by your States' folk--Yankee enterprise and funds being
very essential elements, it appears to me, in all southern projects and
achievements. This speculation, however, from all I hear of the
difficulties of the undertaking, from the nature of the soil, and the
impossibility almost of obtaining efficient labour, is not very likely to
arrive at any very satisfactory result; and, indeed, I find it hard to
conceive how this part of Georgia can possibly produce a town which can be
worth the digging of a canal, even to Yankee speculators. There is one
feature of the undertaking, however, which more than all the others
excites my admiration, namely, that Irish labourers have been advertised
for to work upon the canal, and the terms offered them are twenty dollars
a month per man and their board. Now these men will have for fellow
labourers negroes who not only will receive nothing at all for their work,
but who will