The house stands where two roads meet, and, unlike most planters’ dwellings, is located in full view of the highway.  It is a rambling, disjointed structure, thrown together with no regard to architectural rules, and yet there is a kind of rude harmony in its very irregularities that has a pleasing effect.  The main edifice, with a frontage of nearly eighty feet, is only one and a half stories high, and is overshadowed by a broad projecting roof, which somehow, though in a very natural way, drops down at the eaves, and forms the covering of a piazza, twenty-feet in width, and extending across the entire front of the house.  At its south-easterly angle, the roof is truncated, and made again to form a covering for the piazza, which there extends along a line of irregular buildings for sixty yards.  A portion of the verandah on this side being enclosed, forms a bowling-alley and smoking-room, two essential appendages to a planter’s residence.  The whole structure is covered with yellow-pine weather boarding, which in some former age was covered with paint of a grayish brown color.  This, in many places, has peeled off and allowed the sap to ooze from the pine, leaving every here and there large blotches on the surface, which somewhat resemble the ‘warts’ I have seen on the trunks of old trees.

The house is encircled by grand, old pines, whose tall, upright stems, soaring eighty and ninety feet in the air, make the low hamlet seem lower by the contrast.  They have stood there for centuries, their rough, shaggy coats buttoned close to their chins, and their long, green locks waving in the wind; but man has thrust his long knife into their veins, and their life-blood is fast oozing away.

With the exception of the negro huts, which are scattered at irregular intervals through the woods in the rear of the mansion, there is not a human habitation within an hour’s ride; but such a cosey, inviting, hospitable atmosphere surrounds the whole place, that a stranger does not realize he has happened upon it in a wilderness.

The interior of the dwelling is in keeping with the exterior, though in the drawing-rooms, where rich furniture and fine paintings actually lumber the apartments, there is evident the lack of a nice perception of the ‘fitness of things,’ and over the whole hangs a ‘dusty air,’ which reminds one that the Milesian Bridget does not ‘flourish’ in South Carolina.

I was met in the entrance-way by a tall, fine-looking woman, to whom the Colonel introduced me as follows:—­

’Mr. K——­, this is Madam ——­, my housekeeper; she will try to make you forget that Mrs. J——­ is absent.’

After a few customary courtesies were exchanged, I was shown to a dressing-room, and with the aid of ‘Jim,’ a razor, and one of the Colonel’s shirts,—­all of mine having undergone a drenching,—­soon made a tolerably presentable appearance.  The negro then conducted me to the breakfast-room, where I found the family assembled.