C----, whose daughter, I believe, he married. He
interested me extremely by his description of the house Major ---- had
many years ago on a part of the island called St. Clair. As far as I can
understand there must have been an indefinite number of 'masters''
residences on this estate in the old Major's time; for what with the one
we are building, and the ruined remains of those not quite improved off
the face of the earth, and the tradition of those that have ceased to
exist, even as ruins, I make out no fewer than seven. How gladly would I
exchange all that remain and all that do not, for the smallest tenement
in your blessed Yankee mountain village!

Captain F---- told me that at St. Clair General Oglethorpe, the good and
brave English governor of the State of Georgia in its colonial days, had
his residence, and that among the magnificent live oaks which surround the
site of the former settlement, there was one especially venerable and
picturesque, which in his recollection always went by the name of General
Oglethorpe's Oak. If you remember the history of the colony under his
benevolent rule, you must recollect how absolutely he and his friend and
counsellor, Wesley, opposed the introduction of slavery in the colony. How
wrathfully the old soldier's spirit ought to haunt these cotton fields and
rice swamps of his old domain, with their population of wretched slaves! I
will ride to St. Clair and see his oak; if I should see him, he cannot
have much to say to me on the subject that I should not cry amen to.

_Saturday, March 2._--I have made a gain, no doubt, in one respect in
coming here, dear E----, for, not being afraid of a rearing stallion, I
can ride; but, on the other hand, my aquatic diversions are all likely, I
fear, to be much curtailed. Well may you, or any other Northern
Abolitionist, consider this a heaven-forsaken region,--why? I cannot even
get worms to fish with, and was solemnly assured by Jack this morning that
the whole 'point,' i.e. neighbourhood of the house, had been searched in
vain for these useful and agreeable animals. I must take to some more
sportsman-like species of bait; but in my total ignorance of even the kind
of fish that inhabit these waters, it is difficult for me to adapt my
temptations to their taste.

Yesterday evening I had a visit that made me very sorrowful--if anything
connected with these poor people can be called more especially sorrowful
than their whole condition; but Mr