his
rapturous identification of my most melancholy relation to the poor
fellow.

Having at length extricated myself from the group which forms round me
whenever I stop but for a few minutes, I pursued my voyage of discovery by
peeping into the kitchen garden. I dared do no more; the aspect of the
place would have rejoiced the very soul of Solomon's sluggard of old--a
few cabbages and weeds innumerable filled the neglected looking enclosure,
and I ventured no further than the entrance into its most uninviting
precincts. You are to understand that upon this swamp island of ours we
have quite a large stock of cattle, cows, sheep, pigs, and poultry in the
most enormous and inconvenient abundance. The cows are pretty miserably
off for pasture, the banks and pathways of the dykes being their only
grazing ground, which the sheep perambulate also, in earnest search of a
nibble of fresh herbage; both the cows and sheep are fed with rice flour
in great abundance, and are pretty often carried down for change of air
and more sufficient grazing to Hampton, Mr. ----'s estate, on the island
of St. Simons, fifteen miles from this place, further down the river--or
rather, indeed, I should say in the sea, for 'tis salt water all round,
and one end of the island has a noble beach open to the vast Atlantic. The
pigs thrive admirably here, and attain very great perfection of size and
flavour; the rice flour, upon which they are chiefly fed, tending to make
them very delicate. As for the poultry, it being one of the few privileges
of the poor blacks to raise as many as they can, their abundance is
literally a nuisance--ducks, fowls, pigeons, turkeys (the two latter
species, by the bye, are exclusively the master's property), cluck,
scream, gabble, gobble, crow, cackle, fight, fly, and flutter in all
directions, and to their immense concourse, and the perfect freedom with
which they intrude themselves even into the piazza of the house, the
pantry, and kitchen, I partly attribute the swarms of fleas, and other
still less agreeable vermin, with which we are most horribly pestered.

My walk lay to-day along the bank of a canal, which has been dug through
nearly the whole length of the island, to render more direct and easy the
transportation of the rice from one end of the estate to another, or from
the various distant fields to the principal mill at Settlement No. 1. It
is of considerable width and depth, and opens by various locks into the
ri