travagance of the soldier. The
one made a splendid fortune and spent it in Philadelphia, where he built
one of the finest houses that existed there, in the old-fashioned days,
when fine old family mansions were still to be seen breaking the
monotonous uniformity of the Quaker city. The other has resided here on
his estate ameliorating the condition of his slaves and his property, a
benefactor to the people and the soil alike--a useful and a good
existence, an obscure and tranquil one.

Last Wednesday we drove to Hamilton--by far the finest estate on St.
Simon's Island. The gentleman to whom it belongs lives, I believe,
habitually in Paris; but Captain F---- resides on it, and, I suppose, is
the real overseer of the plantation. All the way along the road (we
traversed nearly the whole length of the island) we found great tracts of
wood, all burnt or burning; the destruction had spread in every direction,
and against the sky we saw the slow rising of the smoky clouds that showed
the pine forest to be on fire still. What an immense quantity of property
such a fire must destroy! The negro huts on several of the plantations
that we passed through were the most miserable human habitations I ever
beheld. The wretched hovels at St. Annie's, on the Hampton estate, that
had seemed to me the _ne plus ultra_ of misery, were really palaces to
some of the dirty, desolate, dilapidated dog kennels which we passed
to-day, and out of which the negroes poured like black ants at our
approach, and stood to gaze at us as we drove by.

The planters' residences we passed were only three. It makes one ponder
seriously when one thinks of the mere handful of white people on this
island. In the midst of this large population of slaves, how absolutely
helpless they would be if the blacks were to become restive! They could be
destroyed to a man before human help could reach them from the main, or
the tidings even of what was going on be carried across the surrounding
waters. As we approached the southern end of the island, we began to
discover the line of the white sea sands beyond the bushes and
fields,--and presently, above the sparkling, dazzling line of snowy
white,--for the sands were as white as our English chalk
cliffs,--stretched the deep blue sea line of the great Atlantic Ocean.

We found that there had been a most terrible fire in the Hamilton
woods--more extensive than that on our own plantation. It seems as if the
whole island had bee