ust tell them how dreadful and how
monstrous it seems to me myself, and how bitterly ashamed and grieved I
feel for it all.

To-day I rode in the morning round poor Cripple Jack's bird field again,
through the sweet spicy-smelling pine land, and home by my new road cut
through Jones's wood, of which I am as proud as if I had made instead of
found it--the grass, flowering shrubs, and all. In the afternoon, I drove
in the wood wagon back to Jones's, and visited Busson Hill on the way,
with performances of certain promises of flannel, quarters of dollars, &c.
&c. At Jones's, the women to-day had all done their work at a quarter past
three, and had swept their huts out very scrupulously for my reception.
Their dwellings are shockingly dilapidated and over-crammed--poor
creatures!--and it seems hard that, while exhorting them to spend labour
in cleaning and making them tidy, I cannot promise them that they shall be
repaired and made habitable for them.

In driving home through my new wood cut, Jack gave me a terrible account
of a flogging that a negro called Glasgow had received yesterday. He
seemed awfully impressed with it; so I suppose it must have been an
unusually severe punishment; but he either would not or could not tell me
what the man had done. On my return to the house, I found Mr. ---- had
come down from the rice plantation, whereat I was much delighted on all
accounts. I am sure it is getting much too late for him to remain in that
pestilential swampy atmosphere; besides I want him to see my improvements
in the new wood paths, and I want him to come and hear all these poor
people's complaints and petitions himself. They have been flocking in to
see him ever since it was known he had arrived. I met coming on that
errand Dandy, the husband of the woman for whom I cut out the gown the
other day; and asking him how it had answered, he gave a piteous account
of its tearing all to pieces the first time she put it on; it had appeared
to me perfectly rotten and good for nothing, and, upon questioning him as
to where he bought it and what he paid for it, I had to hear a sad account
of hardship and injustice. I have told you that the people collect moss
from the trees and sell it to the shopkeepers in Darien for the purpose of
stuffing furniture; they also raise poultry, and are allowed to dispose of
the eggs in the same way. It seems that poor Dandy had taken the miserable
material Edie's gown was made of as payment for