for
learning something of the 15,000 freedmen who compose the loyal
population of the Sea islands.

ON THE PLANTATIONS.

A geographical description of these outlying islands of South Carolina
is hardly necessary at a time when we are studying the map of the
republic under the guidance of bayonets and rifled cannon; and the guns
of Admiral Du Pont revealed more of Port Royal and its surroundings than
we should ever have learned from our geographies. Previous to the
rebellion these islands seem to have been rarely visited--so rarely,
indeed, that the presence of one of our naval vessels in the Beaufort
river, a few years ago, was the signal for a week's festivities and a
general gathering of all the inhabitants to see the strangers--while
the 'cotton lords' vied with each other in entertaining the
distinguished guests. For the most part the islands are low, abounding
in salt-water creeks and marshes, and covered, here and there, with
forests of pine and live oak. The climate in winter is delightful, and
the rapid advance of vegetation in March and April--the sudden bursting
into bloom of a great variety of flowers and flowering shrubs--lends
additional charms to the early spring. Sitting, on one of those
delicious April days, in the upper piazza of an old plantation
house--the eye resting on the long stretch of the cotton fields, now
green with the growing plant--or tracing the windings of the creek
through the numerous small islands, till it is lost in the haze which
covers all the distance--or, again, watching the shadows as they pass
over the groves of oak and pine--while over the whole scene there broods
the stillness of a midsummer's noon--I could but wonder at the madness
which had driven the former dwellers in such a fair land into the
desperate hazards and unaccustomed privations of civil war.

Those who visit these islands to-day, must not expect to realize, in the
altered condition of affairs, their ideal of plantation life, however
that ideal may have been formed. The change which has been wrought in
little more than a year, is truly wonderful. The traces of slavery may
indeed be found in an exhausted soil and an exhausted race, but all
outward signs of the institution have been removed. 'The whip is lost,
the handcuff broken,' the whipping post destroyed, and the cotton gins
broken down. At the 'great house' you find, instead of the master and
overseer, the superintendent and school teacher. In the field