ten by whom, but assuredly the heroine of it ought to have been the
Altamaha shad--a delicate creature, so superior to the animal you
northerners devour with greedy thankfulness when the spring sends back
their finny drove to your colder waters, that one would not suppose these
were of the same family, instead of being, as they really are, precisely
the same fish. Certainly the mud of the Altamaha must have some most
peculiar virtues; and, by the by, I have never anywhere tasted such
delicious tea as that which we make with this same turbid stream, the
water of which duly filtered, of course, has some peculiar softness which
affects the tea (and it is the same we always use) in a most curious and
agreeable manner.

On my return to the house I found a terrible disturbance in consequence of
the disappearance from under cook John's safe keeping, of a ham Mr. -----
had committed to his charge. There was no doubt whatever that the
unfortunate culinary slave had made away in some inscrutable manner with
the joint intended for our table: the very lies he told about it were so
curiously shallow, child-like, and transparent, that while they confirmed
the fact of his theft quite as much if not more than an absolute
confession would have done, they provoked at once my pity and my
irrepressible mirth to a most painful degree. Mr. ---- was in a state of
towering anger and indignation, and besides a flogging sentenced the
unhappy cook to degradation from his high and dignified position (and,
alas! all its sweets of comparatively easy labour and good living from the
remains of our table) to the hard toil, coarse scanty fare, and despised
position of a common field hand. I suppose some punishment was inevitably
necessary in such a plain case of deliberate theft as this, but,
nevertheless, my whole soul revolts at the injustice of visiting upon
these poor wretches a moral darkness which all possible means are taken to
increase and perpetuate.

In speaking of this and the whole circumstance of John's trespass to
Mr. ---- in the evening, I observed that the ignorance of these poor
people ought to screen them from punishment. He replied, that they knew
well enough what was right and wrong. I asked how they could be expected
to know it? He replied, by the means of Cooper London, and the religious
instruction he gave them. So that, after all, the appeal is to be made
against themselves to that moral and religious instruction which is
withhe