peace to all the world, especially the country in which you reside (England), and that to which you more particularly belong; and you will lament that it is your father's unhappy lot to be engaged in war, in civil war, God's severest scourge upon mankind."

These sentiments are worthy a Christian father, when addressing his Christian child; and cold and base must be that heart which could feel hostile to an enemy who could breathe them at such a moment of suffering and irritation.

We set out from Charleston on the 28th February, and arrived at Savannah on the afternoon of the 29th, travelling all night, and completing in the mail stage 110 miles in twenty-seven hours. On mounting our sorry vehicle we found our equipage reduced to a peace establishment of two horses, and our stages were occasionally thirty miles long. We saw nothing particularly interesting in our route, except the cotton plantations, where the Negroes were hard at work under a broiling sun and a driver's lash. Experience had taught us not to trust to this deceitful climate; and we found all our sea coats insufficient to protect us against the excessive cold of the night. In passing through the swamps, we were enveloped in a thick mist, which, in summer, must be highly dangerous. Indeed our driver told us that on two stages on this road last autumu, they lost five drivers, who fell a sacrifice to fever. In the middle of the night I heard the howling of wolves; and when walking before the stage, as we approached Savannah, I started an alligator about six yards from me, which plunged off the road into some water. It was then as intensely hot as it had been cold a few nights before.

Savannah is situated on a river of the same name, and is laid out in long and very broad streets, which meet at right angles, and are lined with trees called "The Pride

of India." These trees are great favourites with the inhabitants; but they are too strongly associated in my mind with yellow fever, to be agreeable. The streets are unpaved; and except in the middle path, which is a heavy disagreeable sand, they are covered with grass. The horses, as in most of the towns in the south, are unshod.

The late fire has given the town a most desolate appearance, yet the inhabitants are most unwittingly running up wooden houses again with great rapidity. Fires are con tinually occurring in this country. A large one happened while I was at Savannah; another at Charleston; and we had a serious alarm at Washington. Brick houses, however, are daily becoming more common. In Charleston a person is stationed every night on the steeple of one of the churches, to watch and give the alarm in case of fire, as the inhabitants are never free from the apprehension of an insurrection of the Slaves in the confusion of a premeditated or accidental conflagration. The late fire in Savannah produced many instances of individual generosity, as well as proofs of general liberality in the other States. A letter of the Mayor, returning the New York contribution, of nearly 30007. because it was accompanied with a request that it might be impartially distributed among the Black and White sufferers, a request which implied a reflection which the southerners resented, was not generally approved. It shews, however, very strongly the sensitive state of feeling on the subject of slavery between the Northern and Southern States.

Of the society at Savannah I saw little, except of the merchants in their counting-houses; and, after spending a short time at an extensive rice plantation in the neighbourhood, I set off in the stage for Augusta on the 11th. My servant had gone forward the preceding day, when the stage was filled with gamblers returning in ill bu

instead of finding him an old bachelor, I should see him with a merry family of twelve or fifteen young people about him. Scenes like these have greatly impressed my mind with the equitable character of the arrangements of Divine Providence as respects soil, climate, and similar allotments, in which good and bad, convenience and inconvenience, are usually blended; and also to reconcile me to the atmosperical vicissitudes of Old England, where, if we have not the bright sky and luscious fruits of some of the south-western parts of the United States, neither have we pine barrens and jungle exhalations winged with fever, and putrescency, and death.

After purchasing a couple of horses for myself and my servant, I left Augusta on the 17th, with the intention of proceeding overland to Mobile or New Orleans. We were a little disconcerted, on rising early that morning, to find the rain falling in torrents. As it cleared up, however, about twelve o'clock, we determined to set out; and with our long-tailed greys, our saddle-bags, our blankets, and our pistols, we made, I assure you, no despicable appearance. After travelling about twenty-eight miles, we stopped for the night at Mrs. Harris's tavern, a small country inn by the way side. Two female Negroes were hand-picking cotton by the kitchen fire, where I took my seat, till I was unexpectedly invited to another room, where a fire had been made for me. first question my landlady asked me was the price of cotton at Augusta; a question which was eagerly repeated wherever I stopped. Indeed, the fluctuations in this article came home to "the business and bosoms" of the poorest family, since every one is concerned more or less in its cultivation. While my hostess poured out my coffee, I asked her if there were any schools in the neighbourhood. She said, Oh, yes; that there was an aca

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demy to which her daughter went when cotton was thirty cents per pound; that she paid three hundred dollars per annum simply for board, and fifty more for learning the pi-a-no! but that, as cotton had fallen to fifteen cents she could not afford to buy an instrument, and supposed her daughter must forget her music. I could not help thinking of the farmer Mrs. Hannah More mentions in her last work, who said he had "Frenched his daughter, and musicked her, and was now sending her to Paris."

We set off at six o'clock the next morning, and went twelve miles to breakfast. Here, as usual, I found several books on the chimney-piece; among which were a Bible, a Testament, a Hymn-book, a book of Geography, Kett's Elements, Lord Byron's Poems, and the Life of Harriet Newell,-the last of which I found, from a note in a blank page, was a gift from the minister of the neighbourhood to the landlord's wife. I mention these books, as they form a sort of average of those which you generally find lying about in the country inns, and which are frequently merely stragglers from no despicable library in the landlord's bedroom. A pleasing young woman, the innkeeper's wife, sate down to make breakfast for me; and I greatly enjoyed this quiet tête-à-tête in the country, after the promiscuous assemblage of sixty or seventy persons at the taverns in the towns. In stopping to breakfast, however, in the Southern States, you must never calculate on a detention of less than two hours, as your entertainers will prepare dishes of meat or poultry for you, and both make and bake the bread after your arrival.

In the evening, about five o'clock, after travelling thirty-three miles, we arrived at Mr. Shirens's, a neat quiet house, on the Ogechee river. Mr. Shirens is a cotton planter, a miller, a farmer, and an innkeeper. I took a letter of introduction to

slavery, in which chimney-sweeping is an object of competition, in order, perhaps, to avoid the stripes which would ensue if the required sum was not earned and paid in to the master. Still the system of allowing the Slaves to select their own work, and to look out for employment for themselves, notwithstanding the frequent hardship and injustice attending it, is a great step toward emancipation, and an admirable preparative for it; and may we not regard it as one of the avenues through which the African will ultimately emerge from his degraded condition, and arrive at the full enjoyment of his violated rights. Surely the warmest and most prejudiced advocates of perpetual slavery will not contend that a man who is capable of taking care of his family while compelled to pay his owner a premium for permission to do so, will become less competent to manage his concerns when exonerated from the tax, or that he will relax in his efforts to improve his condition, because a stranger no longer divides with him the fruit of his toil. Experience will doubtless prove that slavery is a state which cannot very long consist with a general diffusion of that consciousness of their own strength with which the habit of self-dependence will inspire the Negroes, and which, when combined with a large numerical superiority, must ensure ultimate success to their struggles for freedom. Earnestly is it to be hoped, that long before the arrival of such a crisis, the humanity and justice, or, if not, the self-interest, of the master will spare all parties the horrors usually attendant on such struggles, by laying the foundation for a safe and beneficial emancipation.

We left Milledgeville at eight o'clock on the 21st, and arrived at Fort Hawkins, 32 miles distant, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. In the course of the day, we passed several settlements, and occasionally our eyes were regaled with a

few acres of peach trees in full blossom. The cleared land, however, seldom extended into the forest above a few hundred yards from the road, and occurred but at distant intervals. Towards evening we passed six waggons conveying ninetySlaves belonging to General , from his plantation in Georgia, to his settlement on the Cahawba in Alabama. I mention these little occurrences to put you more familiarly in possession of the habits of the country.

Fort Hawkins is a small quadrangle of wooden buildings, supposed, during the late war, to be of some importance in intimidating the Lower Creek Indians, some of whom took part with the British. The whole tract cleared for the fort and a house of entertainment for travellers, is perhaps half a mile square; and from the fort the eye looks down on an unbroken mass of pine woods which lose themselves on every side in the horizon about twenty miles distant.

We left Fort Hawkins at seven o'clock on the 22d, having taken care to secure our breakfast, as we knew that we should not see a habitation till we arrived at our evening quarters. About a mile from Fort Hawkins we crossed the Oakmulgee, and entered the Indian nation of the Creeks. The Oakmulgee in conjunction with the Oconee, forms the Altamaha, and is the last river we crossed which empties itself into the Atlantic. In the course of the day we passed some Indians with their guns and blankets, and several waggons of emigrants from Georgia and Carolina to Alabama. We also saw many gangs of Slaves whom their masters were transporting to Alabama and Mississippi, and met one party returning from New Orleans to Georgia. We were astonished to meet this solitary party going against the stream. Their driver told me that their master had removed them to New Orleans, where they arrived three days before Christmas. In less than a fortnight