anoe upon the wild waters of this
wild western world, my present abode, savage as it seems to me, might
appear comparatively civilized. Certain it is that we are within view of
what calls itself a town, and, moreover, from that town I have received
an invitation to what calls itself a _cotillon party_! and yet, right
and left, stretch the swamps and forests of Georgia, where the red men
have scarcely ceased to skulk, and where the rattlesnakes and
alligators, who shared the wilderness with them, still lurk in
undisturbed possession of the soil, if soil that may be called which is
only either muddy water or watery mud, a hardly consolidated sponge of
alluvial matter, receiving hourly additions from the turbid current of
the Altamaha.

We are here on our plantation, and if you will take a map of North
America, and a powerful magnifying-glass, you may perceive the small
speck dignified by the title of "Butler's Island," the Barataria where I
am now reigning.

Before I say any more upon this subject, however, I wish to thank you
for your kind information about my father and sister. I had a letter
from her not long ago, but it was written during her tour in Germany,
before our poor mother's death, and, of course, contained little of what
must be her present thoughts and feelings, and even little indeed by
which I could understand what their plans were for the winter; but a
long and very interesting account of your friends, the Thuns, whom I
should like to know....

How little pleasure you lost, in my opinion, in not proceeding further
south in this country! for your perception of beauty would have been
almost as much starved as your sense of justice would have been
outraged; at least it is so with me. The sky, God's ever blessed
storehouse of light and loveliness, is almost my only resource here: for
though the wide, brimming waters of this Briareus of a river present a
striking object, and the woods, with their curtains of gray moss waving
like gigantic cobwebs from every tree, and these magical-looking
thickets of varnished evergreens, have a charm, partly real, and partly
borrowed from their mere strangeness; yet the absence of all cultivation
but these swampy rice-fields, and of all population but these degraded
and unfortunate slaves, render a residence here as depressing to the
physical as the moral sense of loveliness.

In contemplating the condition of women generally (a favorite subject of
speculation with you,