, the
cotton tasks are comparatively small, but the garden patch in the rear
of the cabin is large, well fenced in and well cultivated. If you see
few indications of positive happiness, you find no appearances of
overburdened misery. There is about the whole place something of the air
of a New England farmstead, where labor, being honored, crowns even the
humblest with dignity and peace. You take unspeakable comfort in the
fact, that, open what door you may into the life of these people, there
is no _skeleton_ of oppression to startle and haunt you. Go with me,
then, on this calm, bright day of early March, to visit one of the
plantations on Port Royal Island, a few miles out of Beaufort. The
quartermaster kindly furnishes us with a carriage, somewhat shabby and
rickety to be sure, but one of the best that 'Secesh' has left for our
use. Our steeds, too, are only slow-moving Government mules, but there
is one aristocratic feature of our establishment to remind us of the
life that was, viz.: a negro coachman 'educated to drive,' under whose
skilful guidance many a happy family party have been conveyed from
plantation to plantation on social visits like ours to-day. Uncle Ned
speaks kindly of his 'ole massa,' and says he 'would hab stayed wid 'um,
ef massa hadn't run away from heself.'

'But why didn't you _go_ with him, uncle?'

'Oh, sah, I could nebber go to de Secesh.'

Doubtless many more of the house slaves and body servants of the
planters would have followed their masters, had they not been deterred
by fear of the rebel soldiers and hard work in the trenches.

'Use your whip, uncle,' and away we go at a respectable trot over the
principal road on the island, which, from the fact of its having been
made of oyster shells, is called the 'Shell road,' and extends ten miles
to Port Royal Ferry, at the extreme western point of the island. Timely
showers have laid the dust, and all the trees and bushes wear clean
faces. In the yards there are peach trees in bloom, beautiful crimson
japonicas, the jonquil and snowdrop; while everywhere by the roadside
we see the ungainly form and coarse flower of the prickly pear. Passing
the rifle pits and picket station, we soon turn off from the Shell road,
and pass through what was formerly a handsome forest of pines, but which
now has been cleared by the soldier's axe, and rejoices in the title of
'pickpocket tract.' Few of the plantations lie on the main road, and
many of them, li