,
twilight after glare, rest after labour. There is enough strangeness too
in everything that surrounds me here to interest and excite me agreeably
and sufficiently, and I should like the wild savage loneliness of the far
away existence extremely, if it were not for the one small item of 'the
slavery.'

I had a curious visit this morning from half a dozen of the women, among
whom were Driver Morris's wife and Venus (a hideous old goddess she was,
to be sure), Driver Bran's mother. They came especially to see the
children, who are always eagerly asked for, and hugely admired by their
sooty dependents. These poor women went into ecstasies over the little
white piccaninnies, and were loud and profuse in their expressions of
gratitude to massa ---- for getting married and having children, a matter
of thankfulness which, though it always makes me laugh very much, is a
most serious one to them; for the continuance of the family keeps the
estate and slaves from the hammer, and the poor wretches, besides seeing
in every new child born to their owners a security against their own
banishment from the only home they know, and separation from all ties of
kindred and habit, and dispersion to distant plantations, not unnaturally
look for a milder rule from masters who are the children of their fathers'
masters. The relation of owner and slave may be expected to lose some of
its harsher features, and, no doubt, in some instances, does so, when it
is on each side the inheritance of successive generations. And so ----'s
slaves laud, and applaud, and thank, and bless him for having married, and
endowed their children with two little future mistresses. One of these
women, a Diana by name, went down on her knees and uttered in a loud voice
a sort of extemporaneous prayer of thanksgiving at our advent, in which
the sacred and the profane were most ludicrously mingled; her 'tanks to de
good Lord God Almighty that missus had come, what give de poor niggar
sugar and flannel,' and dat 'massa ----, him hab brought de missis and de
two little misses down among de people,' were really too grotesque; and
yet certainly more sincere acts of thanksgiving are not often uttered
among the solemn and decorous ones that are offered up to heaven for
'benefits received.'

I find the people here much more inclined to talk than those on the
rice-island; they have less to do and more leisure, and bestow it very
liberally on me; moreover, the poor old women, of