Emerging from the shanty with provoking deliberation—­the impatience of my host had infected me—­the clay-eater slowly proceeded to mount the horse of the negro, his dirt-bedraggled wife, and clay-incrusted children, following close at his heels, and the younger ones huddling around for the tokens of paternal affection usual at parting.  Whether it was the noise they made, or their frightful aspect, I know not, but the horse, a spirited animal, took fright on their appearance, and nearly broke away from the negro, who was holding him.  Seeing this, the Colonel said: 

‘Clear out, you young scarecrows.  Into the house with you.’

‘They hain’t no more scarecrows than yourn, Cunnel J——­,’ said the mother, in a decidedly belligerent tone.  ’You may ’buse my old man—­he kin stand it—­but ye shan’t blackguard my young ‘uns!’

The Colonel laughed, and was about to make a good-natured reply, when Sandy yelled out: 

‘Gwo enter the house and shet up, ye ——­ ——.’

With this affectionate farewell, he turned his horse and led the way up the road.

The dog, who was a short distance in advance, soon gave a piercing howl, and started off at the speed of a reindeer.  He had struck the trail, and urging our horses to their fastest speed, we followed.

We were all well mounted, but the mare the Colonel had given me was a magnificent animal, as fleet as the wind, and with a gait so easy that her back seemed a rocking-chair.  Saddle-horses at the South are trained to the gallop—­Southern riders deeming it unnecessary that one’s breakfast should be churned into a Dutch cheese by a trotting nag, in order that one may pass for a good horseman.

We had ridden on at a perfect break-neck pace for half an hour, when the Colonel shouted to our companion: 

’Sandy, call the dog in; the horses won’t last ten miles at this gait—­we’ve a long ride before us.’

The dirt-eater did as he was bidden, and we soon settled into a gentle gallop.

We had passed through a dense forest of pines, but were emerging into a ‘bottom country,’ where some of the finest deciduous trees, then brown and leafless, but bearing promise of the opening beauty of spring, reared, along with the unfading evergreen, their tall stems in the air.  The live-oak, the sycamore, the Spanish mulberry, the mimosa, and the persimmon, gayly festooned with wreaths of the white and yellow jessamine, the woodbine and the cypress-moss, and bearing here and there a bouquet of the mistletoe, with its deep green and glossy leaves upturned to the sun—­flung their broad arms over the road, forming an archway grander and more beautiful than any the hand of man ever wove for the greatest heroes the world has worshiped.

The woods were free from underbrush, but a coarse, wiry grass, unfit for fodder, and scattered through them in detached patches, was the only vegetation visible.  The ground was mainly covered with the leaves and burs of the pine.