of creatures, whose only fitting and
Heaven-appointed condition is that of beasts of burthen to the whites. I
do not believe the whole low white population of the state of Georgia
could furnish such an instance of energy, industry, and thrift, as the
amassing of this laborious little fortune by this poor slave, who left,
nevertheless, his children and grandchildren to the lot from which he had
so heroically ransomed himself: and yet the white men with whom I live and
talk tell me, day after day, that there is neither cruelty nor injustice
in this accursed system.

About half-past five I went to walk on the dykes, and met a gang of the
field-hands going to the tide-mill, as the water served them for working
then. I believe I have told you that besides the great steam mill there is
this, which is dependent on the rise and fall of the tide in the river,
and where the people are therefore obliged to work by day or night at
whatever time the water serves to impel the wheel. They greeted me with
their usual profusion of exclamations, petitions, and benedictions, and I
parted from them to come and oversee my slave Jack, for whom I had bought
a spade, and to whom I had entrusted the task of turning up some ground
for me, in which I wanted to establish some of the Narcissus and other
flowers I had remarked about the ground and the house. Jack, however, was
a worse digger than Adam could have been when first he turned his hand to
it, after his expulsion from Paradise. I think I could have managed a
spade with infinitely more efficiency, or rather less incapacity, than he
displayed. Upon my expressing my amazement at his performance, he said
the people here never used spades, but performed all their agricultural
operations with the hoe. Their soil must be very light and their
agriculture very superficial, I should think. However, I was obliged to
terminate Jack's spooning process and abandon, for the present, my hopes
of a flower-bed created by his industry, being called into the house to
receive the return visit of old Mrs. S----. As usual, the appearance,
health, vigour, and good management of the children were the theme of
wondering admiration; as usual, my possession of a white nurse the theme
of envious congratulation; as usual, I had to hear the habitual senseless
complaints of the inefficiency of coloured nurses. If you are half as
tired of the sameness and stupidity of the conversation of my southern
female neighbours as I