teaching them are very severe, heavy fines, increasing in amount for the first and second offence, and imprisonment for the third.[4] Such a man as London is certainly aware that to teach the slaves to read is an illegal act, and he may have been unwilling to betray whoever had been his preceptor even to my knowledge; at any rate, I got no answers from him but ’Well, missis, me learn; well, missis, me try,’ and finally, ’Well, missis, me ‘spose Heaven help me;’ to which I could only reply, that I knew Heaven was helpful, but very hardly to the tune of teaching folks their letters.  I got no satisfaction.  Old Jacob, the father of Abraham, cook John, and poor Psyche’s husband, took a most solemn and sad leave of me, saying he did not expect ever to see me again.  I could not exactly tell why, because, though he is aged and infirm, the fifteen miles between the rice plantation and St. Simon’s do not appear so insuperable a barrier between the inhabitants of the two places, which I represented to him as a suggestion of consolation.

[Footnote 4:  These laws have been greatly increased in stringency and severity since these letters were written, and death has not been reckoned too heavy a penalty for those who should venture to offer these unfortunate people the fruit of that forbidden tree of knowledge, their access to which has appeared to their owners the crowning danger of their own precarious existence among their terrible dependents.]

I have worked my fingers nearly off with making, for the last day or two, innumerable rolls of coarse little baby clothes, layettes for the use of small new-born slaves; M——­ diligently cutting and shaping, and I as diligently stitching.  We leave a good supply for the hospitals, and for the individual clients besides who have besieged me ever since my departure became imminent.

Our voyage from the rice to the cotton plantation was performed in the Lily, which looked like a soldier’s baggage wagon and an emigrant transport combined.  Our crew consisted of eight men.  Forward in the bow were miscellaneous live stock, pots, pans, household furniture, kitchen utensils, and an indescribable variety of heterogeneous necessaries.  Enthroned upon beds, bedding, tables, and other chattels, sat that poor pretty chattel Psyche, with her small chattel children.  Midships sat the two tiny free women, and myself, and in the stern Mr. ——­ steering.  And ‘all in the blue unclouded weather’ we rowed down the huge stream, the men keeping time and tune to their oars with extemporaneous chaunts of adieu to the rice island and its denizens.  Among other poetical and musical comments on our departure recurred the assertion, as a sort of burthen, that we were ‘parted in body, but not in mind,’ from those we left behind.  Having relieved one set of sentiments by this reflection, they very wisely betook themselves to the consideration of the blessings that remained to them, and performed a spirited chaunt in honour of Psyche and our bouncing black housemaid, Mary.