not without making the boat tip perilously.  The immense breadth and volume of the river suddenly seized my eyes and imagination as it were, and I began to fancy that if I got into the middle of the stream I should not be able to paddle myself back against it—­which, indeed, might very well have proved the case.  Then I became nervous, and paddled all on one side, by which means, of course, I only turned the boat round.  S——­ began to fidget about, getting up from where I had placed her, and terrifying me with her unsteady motions and the rocking of the canoe.  I was now very much frightened, and saw that I must get back to shore before I became more helpless than I was beginning to feel; so laying S——­ down in the bottom of the boat as a preliminary precaution, I said to her with infinite emphasis, ‘Now lie still there, and don’t stir, or you’ll be drowned,’ to which, with her clear grey eyes fixed on me, and no sign whatever of emotion, she replied deliberately, ’I shall lie still here, and won’t stir, for I should not like to be drowned,’ which, for an atom not four years old, was rather philosophical.  Then I looked about me, and of course having drifted, set steadily to work and paddled home, with my heart in my mouth almost till we grazed the steps, and I got my precious freight safe on shore again, since which I have taken no more paddling lessons without my slave and master, Jack.

We have had a death among the people since I last wrote to you.  A very valuable slave called Shadrach was seized with a disease which is frequent, and very apt to be fatal here—­peri-pneumonia; and in spite of all that could be done to save him, sank rapidly, and died after an acute illness of only three days.  The doctor came repeatedly from Darien, and the last night of the poor fellow’s life ——­ himself watched with him.  I suppose the general low diet of the negroes must produce some want of stamina in them; certainly, either from natural constitution or the effect of their habits of existence, or both, it is astonishing how much less power of resistance to disease they seem to possess than we do.  If they are ill, the vital energy seems to sink immediately.  This rice cultivation, too, although it does not affect them as it would whites—­to whom, indeed, residence on the rice plantation after a certain season is impossible—­is still, to a certain degree, deleterious even to the negroes.  The proportion of sick is always greater here than on the cotton plantation, and the invalids of this place are not unfrequently sent down to St. Simon’s to recover their strength, under the more favourable influences of the sea air and dry sandy soil of Hampton Point.