I encountered another gliding creature,
that stopped a moment just in front of my horse's feet, as if it was too
much afraid of being trampled upon to get out of the way; it was the only
snake animal I ever saw that I did not think hideous. It was of a
perfectly pure apple green colour, with a delicate line of black like a
collar round its throat; it really was an exquisite worm, and Jack said it
was harmless. I did not, however, think it expedient to bring it home in
my bosom, though if ever I have a pet snake, it shall be such an one.

In the afternoon, I drove to Jones's with several supplies of flannel for
the rheumatic women and old men. We have ridden over to Hamilton again, to
pay another visit to the F----s, and on our way passed an enormous
rattlesnake, hanging dead on the bough of a tree. Dead as it was, it
turned me perfectly sick with horror, and I wished very much to come back
to the north immediately, where these are not the sort of blackberries
that grow on every bush. The evening air now, after the heat of the day,
is exquisitely mild, and the nights dry and wholesome, the whole
atmosphere indescribably fragrant with the perfume of flowers; and as I
stood, before going to bed last night, watching the slow revolving light
on Sapelo Island, that warns the ships from the dangerous bar at the
river's mouth, and heard the measured pulse of the great Atlantic waters
on the beach, I thought no more of rattlesnakes--no more, for one short
while, of slavery. How still, and sweet, and solemn, it was!

We have been paying more friendly and neighbourly visits, or rather
returning them; and the recipients of these civilised courtesies on our
last calling expedition were the family one member of which was a party
concerned in that barbarous challenge I wrote you word about. Hitherto
that very brutal and bloodthirsty cartel appears to have had no result.
You must not on that account imagine that it will have none. At the north,
were it possible for a duel intended to be conducted on such savage terms
to be matter of notoriety, the very horror of the thing would create a
feeling of grotesqueness, and the antagonists in such a proposed encounter
would simply incur an immense amount of ridicule and obloquy. But here
nobody is astonished and nobody ashamed of such preliminaries to a mortal
combat between two gentlemen, who propose firing at marks over each
other's hearts, and cutting off each other's heads; and though this