bite.'
This settled the fishing for that morning, and I let Jack paddle me down
the broad turbid stream, endeavouring to answer in the most comprehensible
manner to his keen but utterly undeveloped intellects the innumerable
questions with which he plied me about Philadelphia, about England, about
the Atlantic, &c. He dilated much upon the charms of St. Simon's, to which
he appeared very glad that we were going; and among other items of
description mentioned, what I was very glad to hear, that it was a
beautiful place for riding, and that I should be able to indulge to my
heart's content in my favourite exercise, from which I have, of course,
been utterly debarred in this small dykeland of ours. He insinuated more
than once his hope and desire that he might be allowed to accompany me,
but as I knew nothing at all about his capacity for equestrian exercises,
or any of the arrangements that might or might not interfere with such a
plan, I was discreetly silent, and took no notice of his most comically
turned hints on the subject. In our row we started a quantity of wild
duck, and he told me that there was a great deal of game at St. Simon's,
but that the people did not contrive to catch much, though they laid traps
constantly for it. Of course their possessing firearms is quite out of
the question; but this abundance of what must be to them such especially
desirable prey, makes the fact a great hardship. I almost wonder they
don't learn to shoot like savages with bows and arrows, but these would be
weapons, and equally forbidden them.

In the afternoon I saw Mr. ---- off for St. Simon's; it is fifteen miles
lower down the river, and a large island at the very mouth of the
Altamaha.

The boat he went in was a large, broad, rather heavy, though well-built
craft, by no means as swift or elegant as the narrow eight-oared long boat
in which he generally takes his walks on the water, but well adapted for
the traffic between the two plantations, where it serves the purpose of a
sort of omnibus or stage-coach for the transfer of the people from one to
the other, and of a baggage waggon or cart for the conveyance of all sorts
of household goods, chattels, and necessaries. Mr. ---- sat in the middle
of a perfect chaos of such freight; and as the boat pushed off, and the
steersman took her into the stream, the men at the oars set up a chorus,
which they continued to chaunt in unison with each other, and in time with
their stroke,