nt a note to this effect to C. this
morning, and also wished to know what would repay the negroes for the
damage done. (The soldiers had already promised to make it good to
them, and were to have been paid off yesterday, but their pay was
stopped in consequence of this very occurrence.) So the whole affair
has ended very satisfactorily. I am sorry for the poor fellows, for
they will probably suffer not so much for what they actually did
themselves, but to serve as an example to all other offenders.

_July 7._ Mr. Wells was to come at nine o'clock to the wharf to take
Mr. Soule[140] to Morgan Island, one of his plantations. Mr. Wells
appeared at the door to say that he had a large sail-boat--it was only
a half-hour's sail to the island, and would not I go too. So I put up
a little lunch and C. had his horse saddled and down to the wharf we
went, and were soon at our destination. The only white-house on the
island now occupied is on quite a bluff looking directly out to sea,
pleasantly shaded, with a fresh breeze all the time up the Sound, and
is a very healthy situation. But the house is of the roughest
description, without paint inside or out, very much like a New
Hampshire farmhouse in the back-woods a quarter of a century ago, but
not so large, clean, or thrifty-looking, by any means. Here we stopped
to see an old man who was brought from Africa when he was over twenty,
and remembers his life in his own country, from which he was sold by
his brother to pay a debt. Mr. Soule said he was bright and talkative
when he last saw him, but now he is very much broken; and after
sitting a few minutes we went on to the driver's house, a great
contrast in neatness, and the gentleman left me in a rocking-chair
under the shade of the large Asia-berry tree in front of the house,
while they went off with Bacchus, the foreman, to see the
cotton-fields. Here I stayed for a couple of hours, I should think,
talking with Elsie, Bacchus' wife, who was not in the field because
she had a headache, and very neat and nice she looked in her calico
gown. She has no children, but made up for the want as far as she
could by the number of chickens and ducks she had round. By and bye
she got up, and picking up a piece of brick, pounded it up with an
axe, and began to clean a large knife, which I knew meant watermelon.
And when the gentlemen came back, Bacchus brought out a small table
and put a melon on it which was almost large enough for a tablecl