--great huge river
mouth or mouths, and open sounds of the sea, with half-submerged salt
marsh islands wallowing in the midst of them.... Over these
waters--pretty rough surfaces, too, sometimes--we traveled to and fro
between the plantations in open boats, generally in a long canoe that
flew under its eight oars like an arrow. The men often sang, while they
rowed, the whole way when I was in the boat, and some of their melodies
are very wild and striking, and their natural gift of music remarkable.
As the boat approached the landing, the steersman brayed forth our
advent through a monstrous conch, when the whole shore would presently
be crowded with our dusky dependents, the whole thing reminding one of
former semi-barbaric times, and modes of life in the islands of the
northwest of Scotland. Some of the airs the negroes sing have a strong
affinity to Scotch melodies in their general character....

It is near ten o'clock in the evening, and with you it is five hours
earlier, so you are probably thinking of dressing for dinner; though,
by-the-bye, you are not at home at Ardgillan, but wandering somewhere
about in Germany--I know not where; neither may I by any means imagine
how you are employed; and your image rises before me without one
accompanying detail of familiar place, circumstance, or occupation, to
give it a this-world's likeness. I see you as I might if you were
dead--your simple apparition unframed by any setting that I can surround
it with; and it is thus that I now see all my friends and kindred, all
those I love in my own country; for the lapse of time and the space of
distance between us render all thoughts of them, even of their very
existence, vague and uncertain. Klopstock, who wrote letters to the
dead, hardly corresponded more absolutely with the inhabitants of
another world than I do....

I drove into town this morning by half-past ten o'clock to church, a
six-miles' journey I take most Sundays. The weekday generally passes in
reading "Nicholas Nickleby," walking about the garden, and devising
alterations which I hope may turn out improvements, playing and singing
half a dozen pieces of music half a century old, and writing to the
"likes of you" (though, indeed, to me you are still a nonesuch).
Farewell, dearest Harriet, _und schlafen sie recht wohl_. Is that the
way you say it, whereabouts you are?

Ever your affectionate,