llotted to the non-performance of the appointed daily
task, and Mr. ---- pronounced the whole transaction perfectly satisfactory
and _en regle_. The common drivers are limited in their powers of
chastisement, not being allowed to administer more than a certain number
of lashes to their fellow slaves. Head man Frank, as he is called, has
alone the privilege of exceeding this limit; and the overseer's latitude
of infliction is only curtailed by the necessity of avoiding injury to
life or limb. The master's irresponsible power has no such bound. When I
was thus silenced on the particular case under discussion, I resorted in
my distress and indignation to the abstract question, as I never can
refrain from doing; and to Mr. ----'s assertion of the justice of poor
Teresa's punishment, I retorted the manifest injustice of unpaid and
enforced labour; the brutal inhumanity of allowing a man to strip and
lash a woman, the mother of ten children; to exact from her toil which was
to maintain in luxury two idle young men, the owners of the plantation. I
said I thought female labour of the sort exacted from these slaves, and
corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly
or humane man. Mr. ---- said he thought it was _disagreeable_, and left me
to my reflections with that concession. My letter has been interrupted for
the last three days; by nothing special, however. My occupations and
interests here of course know no change; but Mr. ---- has been anxious for
a little while past that we should go down to St. Simon's, the cotton
plantation.

We shall suffer less from the heat, which I am beginning to find
oppressive on this swamp island; and he himself wished to visit that part
of his property, whither he had not yet been since our arrival in Georgia.
So the day before yesterday he departed to make the necessary arrangements
for our removal thither; and my time in the meanwhile has been taken up in
fitting him out for his departure.

In the morning Jack and I took our usual paddle, and having the tackle on
board, tried fishing. I was absorbed in many sad and serious
considerations, and wonderful to relate (for you know ---- how keen an
angler I am), had lost all consciousness of my occupation, until after I
know not how long a time elapsing without the shadow of a nibble, I was
recalled to a most ludicrous perception of my ill-success by Jack's
sudden observation, 'Missis, fishing berry good fun when um fish