Returning from the hospital I was accosted by poor old Teresa, the wretched negress who had complained to me so grievously of her back being broken by hard work and child-bearing.  She was in a dreadful state of excitement, which she partly presently communicated to me, because she said Mr. O——­ had ordered her to be flogged for having complained to me as she did.  It seems to me that I have come down here to be tortured, for this punishing these wretched creatures for crying out to me for help is really converting me into a source of increased misery to them.  It is almost more than I can endure to hear these horrid stories of lashings inflicted because I have been invoked; and though I dare say Mr. ——­, thanks to my passionate appeals to him, gives me little credit for prudence or self-command, I have some, and I exercise it too when I listen to such tales as these with my teeth set fast and my lips closed.  Whatever I may do to the master, I hold my tongue to the slaves, and I wonder how I do it.

In the afternoon I rowed with Mr. ——­ to another island in the broad waters of the Altamaha, called Tunno’s Island, to return the visit of a certain Dr. T——­, the proprietor of the island, named after him, as our rice swamp is after Major ——.  I here saw growing in the open air the most beautiful gardinias I ever beheld; the branches were as high and as thick as the largest clumps of Kalmia, that grow in your woods, but whereas the tough, stringy, fibrous branches of these gives them a straggling appearance, these magnificent masses of dark shiny glossy green leaves were quite compact; and I cannot conceive anything lovelier or more delightful than they would be starred all over with their thick-leaved cream-white odoriferous blossoms.

In the course of our visit a discussion arose as to the credibility of any negro assertion, though, indeed, that could hardly be called a discussion that was simply a chorus of assenting opinions.  No negro was to be believed on any occasion or any subject.  No doubt they are habitual liars, for they are slaves, but there are some thrice honourable exceptions who, being slaves, are yet not liars; and certainly the vice results much more from the circumstances in which they are placed than from any natural tendency to untruth in their case.  The truth is that they are always considered as false and deceitful, and it is very seldom that any special investigation of the facts of any particular case is resorted to in their behalf.  They are always prejudged on their supposed general characteristics, and never judged after the fact on the merit of any special instance.