In every direction our view, as we returned, was bounded by thickets of the most beautiful and various evergreen growth, which beckoned my inexperience most irresistibly. ——­ said, to my unutterable horror, that they were perfectly infested with rattlesnakes, and I must on no account go ‘beating about the bush’ in these latitudes, as the game I should be likely to start would be anything but agreeable to me.  We saw quantities of wild plum-trees all silvery with blossoms, and in lovely companionship and contrast with them a beautiful shrub covered with delicate pink bloom like flowering peach-trees.  After that life in the rice-swamp, where the Altamaha kept looking over the dyke at me all the time as I sat in the house writing or working, it is pleasant to be on terra firma again, and to know that the river is at the conventional, not to say natural, depth below its banks, and under my feet instead of over my head.  The two plantations are of diametrically opposite dispositions—­that is all swamp, and this all sand; or to speak more accurately, that is all swamp, and all of this that is not swamp, is sand.

On our way home we met a most extraordinary creature of the negro kind, who, coming towards us, halted, and caused us to halt straight in the middle of the path, when bending himself down till his hands almost touched the ground, he exclaimed to Mr. ——­, ’Massa ——­, your most obedient;’ and then, with a kick and a flourish altogether indescribable, he drew to the side of the path to let us pass, which we did perfectly shouting with laughter, which broke out again every time we looked at each other and stopped to take breath—­so sudden, grotesque, uncouth, and yet dexterous a gambado never came into the brain or out of the limbs of anything but a ‘niggar.’

I observed, among the numerous groups that we passed or met, a much larger proportion of mulattoes than at the rice-island; upon asking Mr. ——­ why this was so, he said that there no white person could land without his or the overseer’s permission, whereas on St. Simon’s, which is a large island containing several plantations belonging to different owners, of course the number of whites, both residing on and visiting the place, was much greater, and the opportunity for intercourse between the blacks and whites much more frequent.  While we were still on this subject, a horrid-looking filthy woman met us with a little child in her arms, a very light mulatto, whose extraordinary resemblance to Driver Bran (one of the officials, who had been duly presented to me on my arrival, and who was himself a mulatto) struck me directly.  I pointed it out to Mr. ——­, who merely answered, ‘Very likely his child.’  ‘And,’ said I, ’did you never remark that Driver Bran is the exact image of Mr. K——?’ ’Very likely his brother,’ was the reply:  all which rather unpleasant state of relationships seemed accepted as such a complete matter of course, that I felt rather uncomfortable, and said no more