on flesh, and looked somewhat more contented.  “Yes, yes,” he says, “that may do for Englishmen very well, but it won’t do here.  Here we make our own laws, and we keep them too.  It may do for Englishmen very well, to have the liberty of paying taxes for the support of the nobility.  To have the liberty of being incarcerated in a gaol, for shooting the wild animals of the country.  To have the liberty of being seized by a press-gang, torn away from their wives and families, and flogged at the discretion of my lord Tom, Dick, or Harry’s bastard.”  At this, the Kentuckian gnashed his teeth, and instinctively grasped his hunting-knife;—­an old Indian doctor, who was squatting in one corner of the room, said, slowly and emphatically, as his eyes glared, his nostrils dilated, and his lip curled with contempt—­“The Englishman is a dog”—­while a Georgian slave, who stood behind his master’s chair, grinned and chuckled with delight, as he said—­“poor Englishman, him meaner man den black nigger.”—­“To have,” continued the Englishman, “the liberty of being transported for seven years for being caught learning the use of the sword or the musket.  To have the tenth lamb, and the tenth sheaf seized, or the blanket torn from off his bed, to pay a bloated, a plethoric bishop or parson,—­to be kicked and cuffed about by a parcel of ’Bourbon gendarmerie’—­Liberty!—­why hell sweat”—­here I—­slipped out at the side door into the water-melon patch.  As I receded, I heard the whole party burst out into an obstreperous fit of laughter.—­A few broken sentences, from the Kentuckian and the radical, reached my ear, such as “backed out”—­“damned aristocratic.”  I returned in about half an hour to pay my bill, when I could observe one or two of those doughty politicians who remained, leering at me most significantly.  However, I—­“smiled, and said nothing.”

“The Chestnut ridge” is a chain of rocky, barren mountains, covered with wood, and the ascent is steep and difficult.  It is named from the quantity of chestnut trees that compose the bulk of its timber.  Being a little fatigued in ascending, I sat down in a wood of scrub oak.  When I had been some time seated on a large stone, my ear caught the gliding of a snake.  Turning quickly, I perceived, at about a yard’s distance, a reptile of that beautiful species the rattle-snake.  He ceased moving:  I jumped up, and struck at his head with a stick, but missed the blow.  He instantly coiled and rattled.  I now retreated beyond the range of his spring.  Perceiving that I had no intention of giving him fair play by coming within his reach, he suddenly uncoiled and glid across a log, thinking to make good his retreat; but being determined on having—­not his scalp, for the head of a rattle-snake is rather a dangerous toy—­but his rattle, I pursued him across the log.  He now coiled again, and rattled most furiously, thus indicating his extreme wrath at being attacked:  the bite of this reptile is