tle and tumult of most American cities. While
waiting for our vehicle we enjoyed the hospitality of one of our
friends, who took us into an old-fashioned angular wooden mansion, more
than a century old, still sound in every timber, and testifying in its
quaint wainscotings, and the rigid framework of door and window, to the
durability of its cypress timbers and the preservative character of the
atmosphere. In early days it was the crack house of the old settlement,
and the residence of the founder of the female branch of the family of
our host, who now only makes it his halting-place when passing to and
fro between Charleston and his plantation, leaving it the year round in
charge of an old servant and her grandchild. Rose-trees and flowering
shrubs clustered before the porch and filled the garden in front, and
the establishment gave me a good idea of a London merchant's retreat
about Chelsea a hundred and fifty years ago.

At length we were ready for our journey, and, mounted in two light
covered vehicles, proceeded along the sandy track, which, after a while,
led us to a deep cut in the bosom of the woods, where silence was only
broken by the cry of a woodpecker, the boom of a crane, or the sharp
challenge of the jay. For miles we passed through the shadow of this
forest, meeting only two or three vehicles, containing female planterdom
on little excursions of pleasure or business, who smiled their welcome
as we passed. Arrived at a deep chocolate-colored stream, called Black
River, full of fish and alligators, we find a flat large enough to
accommodate vehicles and passengers, and propelled by two negroes
pulling upon a stretched rope, in the manner usual in the ferry-boats
of Switzerland, ready for our reception.

Another drive through a more open country, and we reach a fine grove
of pine and live-oak, which melts away into a shrubbery, guarded by a
rustic gate-way, passing through which, we are brought by a sudden turn
into the planter's house, buried in trees, which dispute with the
greensward and with wild flower-beds every yard of the space which lies
between the hall-door and the waters of the Pedee; and in a few minutes,
as we gaze over the expanse of fields just tinged with green by the
first life of the early rice crops, marked by the deep water cuts, and
bounded by a fringe of unceasing forest, the chimneys of the steamer we
had left at Georgetown gliding as it were through the fields indicate
the existenc