The only exception that I have met with, yet among our boat voices to the high tenor which they seem all to possess is in the person of an individual named Isaac, a basso profondo of the deepest dye, who nevertheless never attempts to produce with his different register any different effects in the chorus by venturing a second, but sings like the rest in unison, perfect unison, of both time and tune.  By-the-by, this individual does speak, and therefore I presume he is not an ape, ourang-outang, chimpanzee, or gorilla; but I could not, I confess, have conceived it possible that the presence of articulate sounds, and the absence of an articulate tail, should make, externally at least, so completely the only appreciable difference between a man and a monkey, as they appear to do in this individual ‘black brother.’  Such stupendous long thin hands, and long flat feet, I did never see off a large quadruped of the ape species.  But, as I said before, Isaac speaks, and I am much comforted thereby.

You cannot think (to return to the songs of my boatmen) how strange some of their words are:  in one, they repeatedly chanted the ‘sentiment’ that ‘God made man, and man makes’—­what do you think?—­’money!’ Is not that a peculiar poetical proposition?  Another ditty to which they frequently treat me they call Caesar’s song; it is an extremely spirited war-song, beginning ‘The trumpets blow, the bugles sound—­Oh, stand your ground!’ It has puzzled me not a little to determine in my own mind whether this title of Caesar’s song has any reference to the great Julius, and if so what may be the negro notion of him, and whence and how derived.  One of their songs displeased me not a little, for it embodied the opinion that ’twenty-six black girls not make mulatto yellow girl;’ and as I told them I did not like it, they have omitted it since.  This desperate tendency to despise and undervalue their own race and colour, which is one of the very worst results of their abject condition, is intolerable to me.

While rowing up and down the broad waters of the Altamaha to the music of these curious chants, I have been reading Mr. Moore’s speech about the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia; and I confess I think his the only defensible position yet taken, and the only consistent argument yet used in any of the speeches I have hitherto seen upon the subject.

I have now settled down at Hampton again; Mr. ——­ is quite recovered, and is coming down here in a day or two for change of air; it is getting too late for him to stay on the rice plantation even in the day, I think.  You cannot imagine anything so exquisite as the perfect curtains of yellow jasmine with which this whole island is draped; and as the boat comes sweeping down towards the point, the fragrance from the thickets hung with their golden garlands greets one before one can distinguish them; it is really enchanting.