poor dependents, waiting to catch a
glimpse of Mr. ----, myself, or the children; and until, from sheer
weariness, I was obliged to shut the doors, an incessant stream poured in
and out, whose various modes of salutation, greeting, and welcome were
more grotesque and pathetic at the same time than anything you can
imagine. In the afternoon I walked with ---- to see a new house in process
of erection, which, when it is finished, is to be the overseer's abode and
our residence during any future visits we may pay to the estate. I was
horrified at the dismal site selected, and the hideous house erected on
it. It is true that the central position is the principal consideration in
the overseer's location, but both position and building seemed to me to
witness to an inveterate love of ugliness, or at any rate a deadness to
every desire of beauty, nothing short of horrible; and for my own part, I
think it is intolerable to have to leave the point where the waters meet,
and where a few fine picturesque old trees are scattered about, to come to
this place even for the very short time I am ever likely to spend here.

In every direction our view, as we returned, was bounded by thickets of
the most beautiful and various evergreen growth, which beckoned my
inexperience most irresistibly. ---- said, to my unutterable horror, that
they were perfectly infested with rattlesnakes, and I must on no account
go 'beating about the bush' in these latitudes, as the game I should be
likely to start would be anything but agreeable to me. We saw quantities
of wild plum-trees all silvery with blossoms, and in lovely companionship
and contrast with them a beautiful shrub covered with delicate pink bloom
like flowering peach-trees. After that life in the rice-swamp, where the
Altamaha kept looking over the dyke at me all the time as I sat in the
house writing or working, it is pleasant to be on _terra firma_ again, and
to know that the river is at the conventional, not to say natural, depth
below its banks, and under my feet instead of over my head. The two
plantations are of diametrically opposite dispositions--that is all swamp,
and this all sand; or to speak more accurately, that is all swamp, and
all of this that is not swamp, is sand.

On our way home we met a most extraordinary creature of the negro kind,
who, coming towards us, halted, and caused us to halt straight in the
middle of the path, when bending himself down till his hands almost
tou