his is every way the pleasanter residence, I hear so much more
that is intolerable of the treatment of the slaves from those I find here,
that my life is really made wretched by it. There is not a single natural
right that is not taken away from these unfortunate people, and the worst
of all is, that their condition does not appear to me, upon further
observation of it, to be susceptible of even partial alleviation as long
as the fundamental evil, the slavery itself, remains.

My letter was interrupted as usual by clamours for my presence at the
door, and petitions for sugar, rice, and baby clothes, from a group of
women who had done their tasks at three o'clock in the afternoon, and had
come to say, 'Ha do missis?' (How do you do?), and beg something on their
way to their huts. Observing one among them whose hand was badly maimed,
one finger being reduced to a mere stump, she told me it was in
consequence of the bite of a rattlesnake, which had attacked and bitten
her child, and then struck her as she endeavoured to kill it; her little
boy had died, but one of the drivers cut off her finger, and so she had
escaped with the loss of that member only. It is yet too early in the
season for me to make acquaintance with these delightful animals; but the
accounts the negroes give of their abundance is full of agreeable promise
for the future. It seems singular, considering how very common they are,
that there are not more frequent instances of the slaves being bitten by
them; to be sure, they seem to me to have a holy horror of ever setting
their feet near either tree or bush, or anywhere but on the open road, and
the fields where they labour; and of course the snakes are not so frequent
in open and frequented places, as in their proper coverts. The Red Indians
are said to use successfully some vegetable cure for the bite, I believe
the leaves of the slippery ash or elm; the only infallible remedy,
however, is suction, but of this the ignorant negroes are so afraid, that
they never can be induced to have recourse to it, being of course
immovably persuaded that the poison which is so fatal to the blood, must
be equally so to the stomach. They tell me that the cattle wandering into
the brakes and bushes are often bitten to death by these deadly creatures;
the pigs, whose fat it seems does not accept the venom into its tissues
with the same effect, escape unhurt for the most part--so much for the
anti-venomous virtue of adipose ma