oth;
then he produced plates, and Mr. Wells carved the huge monster, which
we nearly devoured. The air and grace with which one of the men, who
came up to clear off the table for Mr. Wells to pay the people,
touched his hat with a bow and a scrape would not have misbecome a
Commencement Dinner or Wedding Party.

The keen interest which these Northern interlopers took in
everything that concerned the people into whose shoes they
had stepped, and their constant sense of the strangeness and
romance of their situation appear in the extracts that
follow. Again the chronology of the letters has been
somewhat disregarded.

FROM H. W.

_July 14._ G. came over here and spent the day. He told us that a man
who belonged on his place came back with the troops on one of their
late expeditions, and told him that his master, T. J. Fripp, was
killed at Darien. He said he (Fripp) had been past here in a boat and
came back with his hands all blistered from rowing; they had been
hailed by the _Kingfisher_, but told some story of having come from
here, and escaped. He said his master swore the Yankees were
everywhere, and that there was a light in every window of Tom Coffin's
house.

E. S. P. TO C. P. W.

_Boston, Sept. 30._ I heard the other day that Captain Boutelle of the
Coast Survey, who used to enjoy the hospitality of the planters of St.
Helena, Edisto, etc., was dining at Cambridge, Mass., with a classmate
of T. A. C.'s. The host inquired what had become of the Captain's
former friends, the South Carolina planters. "Oh, they are all
scattered and their property ruined." "Well, what has become of my
classmate, Thomas A. Coffin?" "Oh, he is gone with the rest, and his
fine plantation is in the hands of that confounded Abolitionist,
Philbrick."

FROM H. W.

_July 10._ William has been overhauling the old letters and papers in
the garret and has come across many very interesting bits of
information among them. They are mostly very old. Old plantation books
of Mr. Eben Coffin, the first proprietor of the name of this estate,
dated 1800, containing lists of the slaves of former generations, in
which some of the oldest here now, like Uncle Sam, are mentioned as
two years old; estimates for this house and the building in the yard,
etc.

_Aug. 5._ C. has found a spike of papers in the old overseer house, on
which he and Mr. Soule are now expending their eyesight. Letters from
Mr. Coffin to Cocklof