s we were to
wait here some time, we went on shore to walk. The appearance of the
cotton-fields at this season of the year was barren enough; but, as a
compensation, I here, for the first time, saw the evergreen oak-trees
(the ilex, I presume) of the South. They were not very fine specimens of
their kind, and disappointed me a good deal. The advantage they have of
being evergreen is counterbalanced by the dark and almost dingy color of
the foliage, and the leaf being minute in size, and not particularly
graceful in form. These trees appeared to me far from comparable, either
in size or beauty, to the European oak, when it has attained its full
growth. We were walking on the estate of one of the Mr. Seabrooks, which
lay unenclosed on each side of what appeared to be the public road
through the island.

At a short distance from the landing we came to what is termed a
ginning-house--a building appropriated to the process of freeing the
cotton from the seed. It appeared to be open to inspection; and we
walked through it. Here were about eight or ten stalls on either side,
in each of which a man was employed at a machine, worked like a turner's
or knife-grinder's wheel, by the foot, which, as fast as he fed it with
cotton, parted the snowy flakes from the little black first cause, and
gave them forth soft, silky, clean, and fit to be woven into the finest
lace or muslin. This same process of ginning is performed in many
places, and upon our own cotton-estate, by machinery; the objection to
which however, is, that the staple of the cotton--in the length of
which consists its chief excellence--is supposed by some planters to be
injured, and the threads broken, by the substitution of an engine for
the task performed by the human fingers in separating the cotton and
presenting it to the gin.

After walking through this building, we pursued our way past a large,
rambling, white wood house, and down a road, bordered on each side with
evergreen oaks. While we were walking, a young man on horseback passed
us, whose light hair, in a very picturesque contempt of modern fashion,
absolutely flowed upon the collar of his coat, and was blown back as he
rode, like the disheveled tresses of a woman. On Edisto Island such a
noble exhibition of individuality would probably find few censors.

As we returned towards the boat we stopped to examine an irregular
scrambling hedge of the wild orange, another of the exquisite shrubs of
this paradi