olina; visited Columbia, the capital of the state, a pretty town;
roamed over a considerable part of Barnwell district, with some part of
the neighboring one of Orangeburg; enjoyed the hospitality of the
planters--very agreeable and intelligent men; been out in a racoon hunt;
been present at a corn-shucking; listened to negro ballads, negro jokes,
and the banjo; witnessed negro dances; seen two alligators at least, and
eaten bushels of hominy.

Whoever comes out on the railroad to this district, a distance of seventy
miles or more, if he were to judge only by what he sees in his passage,
might naturally take South Carolina for a vast pine-forest, with here and
there a clearing made by some enterprising settler, and would wonder where
the cotton which clothes so many millions of the human race, is produced.
The railway keeps on a tract of sterile sand, overgrown with pines;
passing, here and there, along the edge of a morass, or crossing a stream
of yellow water. A lonely log-house under these old trees, is a sight for
sore eyes; and only two or three plantations, properly so called, meet the
eye in the whole distance. The cultivated and more productive lands lie
apart from this tract, near streams, and interspersed with more frequent
ponds and marshes. Here you find plantations comprising several thousands
of acres, a considerable part of which always lies in forest; cotton and
corn fields of vast extent, and a negro village on every plantation, at a
respectful distance from the habitation of the proprietor. Evergreen trees
of the oak family and others, which I mentioned in my last letter, are
generally planted about the mansions. Some of them are surrounded with
dreary clearings, full of the standing trunks of dead pines; others are
pleasantly situated in the edge of woods, intersected by winding paths. A
ramble, or a ride--a ride on a hand-gallop it should be--in these pine
woods, on a fine March day, when the weather has all the spirit of our
March days without its severity, is one of the most delightful recreations
in the world. The paths are upon a white sand, which, when not frequently
travelled, is very firm under foot; on all sides you are surrounded by
noble stems of trees, towering to an immense height, from whose summits,
far above you, the wind is drawing deep and grand harmonies; and often
your way is beside a marsh, verdant with magnolias, where the yellow
jessamine, now in flower, fills the air with fragran