e miscellaneous live stock, pots, pans, household furniture, kitchen
utensils, and an indescribable variety of heterogeneous necessaries.
Enthroned upon beds, bedding, tables, and other chattels, sat that poor
pretty chattel Psyche, with her small chattel children. Midships sat the
two tiny free women, and myself, and in the stern Mr. ---- steering. And
'all in the blue unclouded weather' we rowed down the huge stream, the men
keeping time and tune to their oars with extemporaneous chaunts of adieu
to the rice island and its denizens. Among other poetical and musical
comments on our departure recurred the assertion, as a sort of burthen,
that we were 'parted in body, but not in mind,' from those we left behind.
Having relieved one set of sentiments by this reflection, they very wisely
betook themselves to the consideration of the blessings that remained to
them, and performed a spirited chaunt in honour of Psyche and our bouncing
black housemaid, Mary.

At the end of a fifteen miles' row we entered one among a perfect
labyrinth of arms or branches, into which the broad river ravels like a
fringe as it reaches the sea, a dismal navigation along a dismal tract,
called 'Five Pound,' through a narrow cut or channel of water divided from
the main stream. The conch was sounded, as at our arrival at the rice
island, and we made our descent on the famous long staple cotton island of
St. Simon's, where we presently took up our abode in what had all the
appearance of an old half-decayed rattling farm-house.

This morning, Sunday, I peeped round its immediate neighbourhood, and saw,
to my inexpressible delight, within hail, some noble-looking evergreen
oaks, and close to the house itself a tiny would-be garden, a plot of
ground with one or two peach-trees in full blossom, tufts of silver
narcissus and jonquils, a quantity of violets and an exquisite myrtle
bush; wherefore I said my prayers with especial gratitude.

* * * * *

Dearest E----. The fame of my peculiar requisitions has, I find, preceded
me here, for the babies that have been presented to my admiring notice
have all been without caps; also, however, without socks to their opposite
little wretched extremities, but that does not signify quite so much. The
people, too, that I saw yesterday were remarkably clean and tidy; to be
sure, it was Sunday. The whole day, till quite late in the afternoon, the
house was surrounded by a crowd of our