most
of the fields, and over the greater part of the plantation. It was a
detestable process, the more so that he rode Montreal and I Miss Kate, and
we had no small difficulty in managing them both. In the afternoon we had
an equally detestable drive through the new wood paths to St. Annie's, and
having accomplished all my errands among the people there, we crossed over
certain sounds, and seas, and separating waters, to pay a neighbourly
visit to the wife of one of our adjacent planters.

How impossible it would be for you to conceive, even if I could describe,
the careless desolation which pervaded the whole place; the shaggy unkempt
grounds we passed through to approach the house; the ruinous, rackrent,
tumble-down house itself, the untidy, slatternly all but beggarly
appearance of the mistress of the mansion herself. The smallest Yankee
farmer has a tidier estate, a tidier house, and a tidier wife than this
member of the proud southern chivalry, who, however, inasmuch as he has
slaves, is undoubtedly a much greater personage in his own estimation than
those capital fellows W---- and B----, who walk in glory and in joy behind
their ploughs upon your mountain sides. The Brunswick canal project was
descanted upon, and pronounced, without a shadow of dissent, a scheme the
impracticability of which all but convicted its projectors of insanity.
Certainly, if, as I hear the monied men of Boston have gone largely into
this speculation, their habitual sagacity must have been seriously at
fault; for here on the spot nobody mentions the project but as a subject
of utter derision.

While the men discussed about this matter, Mrs. B---- favoured me with the
congratulations I have heard so many times on the subject of my having a
white nursery maid for my children. Of course, she went into the old
subject of the utter incompetency of negro women to discharge such an
office faithfully; but in spite of her multiplied examples of their utter
inefficiency, I believe the discussion ended by simply our both agreeing
that ignorant negro girls of twelve years old are not as capable or
trustworthy as well-trained white women of thirty.

Returning home our route was changed, and Quash the boatman took us all
the way round by water to Hampton. I should have told you that our exit
was as wild as our entrance to this estate and was made through a broken
wooden fence, which we had to climb partly over and partly under, with
some risk and some