. The people themselves will, no
doubt, one day interfere to abate this terrible scourge, which exists
amongst them only for their ruin; and when the cry is once afoot, the
retribution will be awful.[1]

After dinner rode out to the race-course, and saw Pelham, who is in
training to run a mile with Hard-heart. Pelham is a handsome little
chestnut, with a perfectly thorough-bred air, and gallops like a witch.

From the course, rode to the mansion of Mrs. M----r, the very _beau
ideal_ of a Southern dwelling, having on either front very deep
porticoes opening into a capacious hall, with winding stairs of stone
outside leading on to a gallery twenty feet wide, which is carried round
the building on a level with the first-floor story, and is covered by a
projecting roof supported by handsome pillars: by this means the inner
walls are far removed from the effect of either sun or rain, and the
spacious apartments kept both cool and dry. The kitchen and other
offices are detached, forming two sides of a quadrangle, of which the
house is the third, and the fourth a garden.

Here I saw a negro whose age was supposed by Mrs. M----r to be about one
hundred and twenty. He had been in her husband's house, who was an
officer in the Spanish service, when she married, and first came here
half a century back, and was then considered past labour. The old boy
was quite a wag; cracked several jokes, as well as his want of teeth
would let him, upon one of the company about to be married; and, on
being shown a lump of fine Cavendish tobacco he had asked for, his eye
sparkled like a serpent's. Mr. M----r assured me his appetite was good;
and that when supplied with abundance of tobacco, he was always as at
present, cheerful.

After eleven o'clock P.M. put on my cloak, and, tempted by the fineness
of the night, accompanied my friend T----r on his way to his own
quarters; returning along the edge of the lofty bluff between whose foot
and the river is squeezed the town of Natchez.

Whilst smoking my cigar here, the murmur of a fray came to me, borne
upon the light breeze: my curiosity was excited by the indistinct
sounds, and I walked along in the direction whence they came for a
couple of minutes. As I neared it, the tumult grew in loudness and
fierceness; men's hoarse and angry voices, mingled in hot dispute, came
crashing upwards as from the deeps of hell. I bent anxiously over the
cliff, as though articulate sounds might be caught three