at the wharf is letting off.

Upon this island of ours (I think I look a little like Sancho Panza) we
enjoy the perpetual monotonous burden of two steam-engines working the
rice mills, and instead of red men and canoes, my illustrious self and
some prettily built and gaily painted boats, which I take great delight
in rowing.

The strangeness of this existence surprises me afresh every hour by its
contrast with all my former experiences; and as I sat resting on my oars
at the Darien wharf the other evening, watching a huge cotton-raft float
down the broad Altamaha, my mind wandered back to my former life--the
scenes, the people, the events, the feelings which made up all my
former existence; and I felt like the little old woman whose petticoats
were cut all round about. "O Lord a mercy! sure this is never I!" But,
then, she had a resource in her dog, which I have not; and so I am not
quite sure that it is I....

The climate is too warm for me, and I almost doubt its being as
wholesome for the children as a colder one. We have now summer heat,
tempered in some degree by breezes from the river and the sea, which is
only fifteen miles off; but the people of the place complain of the
cold, and apologize to me for the chilliness of the weather, which they
assure me is quite unusual. I have come home more than once, however,
after a walk round the rice banks, with a bad headache, in consequence
of the fierce sunshine pouring down upon these swamps, and do not think
that I should thrive in such a climate. It is impossible here to take
exercise on horseback, which has become almost indispensable to me; and
though I have adopted rowing as a substitute I find it both a fatiguing
and an inadequate one.

We live here in a very strange manner. The house we inhabit, which was
intended merely as the overseer's residence, is inferior in appearance
and every decent accommodation to the poorest farm-house in any part of
England. Neither cleanliness nor comfort enter into our daily
arrangements at all. The little furniture there is in the rooms is of
the coarsest and roughest description; and the household services are
performed by negroes, who run in and out, generally barefooted, and
always filthy both in their clothes and person, to wait upon us at our
meals. How I have wished for a decent, tidy, English servant of all
work, instead of these begrimed, ignorant, incapable poor creatures, who
stumble about round us in zealous hindranc