In my afternoon’s row to-day I passed a huge dead alligator, lying half in and half out of the muddy slime of the river bank—­a most hideous object it was, and I was glad to turn my eyes to the beautiful surface of the mid stream, all burnished with sunset glories, and broken with the vivacious gambols of a school of porpoises.  It is curious, I think, that these creatures should come fifteen miles from the sea to enliven the waters round our little rice swamp.

While rowing this evening, I was led by my conversation with Jack to some of those reflections with which my mind is naturally incessantly filled here, but which I am obliged to be very careful not to give any utterance to.  The testimony of no negro is received in a southern court of law, and the reason commonly adduced for this is, that the state of ignorance in which the negroes are necessarily kept, renders them incapable of comprehending the obligations of an oath, and yet with an inconsistency which might be said to border on effrontery, these same people are admitted to the most holy sacrament of the Church, and are certainly thereby supposed to be capable of assuming the highest Christian obligations, and the entire fulfilment of God’s commandments—­including, of course, the duty of speaking the truth at all times.

As we were proceeding down the river, we met the flat, as it is called, a huge sort of clumsy boat, more like a raft than any other species of craft, coming up from St. Simon’s with its usual swarthy freight of Mr. ——­’s dependants from that place.  I made Jack turn our canoe, because the universal outcries and exclamations very distinctly intimated that I should be expected to be at home to receive the homage of this cargo of ‘massa’s people.’  No sooner, indeed, had I disembarked and reached the house, than a dark cloud of black life filled the piazza and swarmed up the steps, and I had to shake hands, like a popular president, till my arm ached at the shoulder-joint.

When this tribe had dispersed itself, a very old woman with a remarkably intelligent, nice-looking young girl, came forward and claimed my attention.  The old woman, who must, I think, by her appearance, have been near seventy, had been one of the house servants on St. Simon’s Island in Major ——­’s time, and retained a certain dignified courtesy and respectfulness of manner which is by no means an uncommon attribute of the better class of slaves, whose intercourse with their masters, while tending to expand their intelligence, cultivates, at the same time, the natural turn for good manners which is, I think, a distinctive peculiarity of negroes, if not in the kingdom of Dahomey, certainly in the United States of America.  If it can be for a moment attributed to the beneficent influence of slavery on their natures (and I think slaveowners are quite likely to imagine so), it is curious enough that there is hardly any alloy whatever of cringing servility, or even humility, in the good