" on my plantation at Liberty Hall. Will may be "known by the incisions of the whip on his back; " and I suspect has taken the road to Coosobatchie, "where he has a wife and five children, whom “I sold last week to Mr. Gillespie." A. Levi. Thus are the poor negroes treated in Carolina. Indeed, planters usually consider their slaves as beings defective in understanding; an opinion that excites only scorn from the philosopher. The human soul possesses faculties susceptible of improvement, without any regard to the colour of the skin. It is education that makes the difference between the master and the slave. Shall the imperious planter say, that the swarthy sons of Africa, who now groan under his usurpation of their rights, would not equal him in virtue, knowledge and manners, had they been born free, and with the same advantages in the scale of society? It is to civilization that even Europeans owe their superiority over the savage; who knows only how to hunt and fish, to hew out a canoe from a tree, and construct a wretched hut; and but for this, the inhabitants of Britain had still bent the bow, still clothed themselves in skins, and still traversed the woods. No climate can be hotter than that of South Carolina and Georgia. In the piazza of a house at Charleston, when a breeze has prevailed, and there has been no other building near to reflect the heat of the sun, I have known the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer to stand at 101. In the night it did not sink below 89. Animal heat I ascertained to be less than the heat of the weather. By confining the thermometer to the hottest part of my body, I found the mercury subside from 101 to 96. In fact, I never could raise the thermometer higher than ç6 by animal heat.* In a voyage to the East Indies, I kept a regular account of the height of the thermometer, both in the sun and the shade. My journal is now before me. At eight in the morning, when our fhip was on the Equator, the thermometer in the shade was only 77 degrees; and the same day in the sun at noon it was 99.† It may be advanced that the pavements of Charleston, and the situation of Savannah, which is built on a sandy eminence, may augment the heat of the weather; but be that as it may, it is, I think, incontrovertible, that no two places on the earth are hotter than Savannah and Charleston. I do not remember that the thermometer in the shade at Batavia exceeded 101. *Boerhave fixed the vital heat at only 92 degrees; but both Sir Isaac Newton and Fahrenheit have made it 96. + I have found, since making these observations, that from nearly 4000 experiments made at Madras, the medium height of the thermometer was 80, 9. The general greatest height, 87, 1; and the least 75, 5. The extreme difference 11, . But if the heat of the weather in the southernmost States be excessive, not less sudden are its changes. In fact, so variable is the weather, that one day not infrequently exhibits the vicissitudes of the four seasons. The remark of an early colonist is more than poetically true. Hic adeo inconstans est, et variable cælum, I have known one day the mercury to stand at 85; and the next it has sunk to 39. But it is from the middle of June to the middle of September, that the excessive heats prevail. It is then the debilitating quality of the weather consigns the languid lady to her sopha, who, if she lets fall her pocket handkerchief, has not strength to pick it up, but calls to one of her black girls, who is all life and vigour. Hence there is a proportion of good and evil in every condition; for a negro-girl is not more a slave to her mistress, than her mistress to a sopha; and the one riots in health, while the other has every faculty enervated. Negroes are remarkably tolerant of heat. A negro in the hottest month will court a fire. From the black there is an easy transition to the white man. Society in Carolina exhibits not that unrestrained intercourse which characterises English manners. And this remark will apply throughout the States of the Union. The Eng lish have been called reserved; and an American who forms his notions of their manners from Addison and Steele, entertains a contemptible opinion of the cheerfulness that prevails in the nook-shotten isle of Albion. But let the cheerfulness of both countries be fairly weighed, and I believe the scale will preponderate in favour of the English. That quality termed humour is not indigenous to America. The pleasantries of a droll would not relax the risible muscles of a party of Americans, however disposed to be merry; the wag would feel no encouragement from the surrounding countenances to exert his laughter-moving powers; but like the tyrant in the tragedy, he would be compelled to swallow the poison that was prepared for another. Cotton in Carolina, and horse-racing in Virginia, are the prevailing topics of conversation: these reduce every understanding to a level, and to these Americans return from the ebullitions of the humourist, as the eye weary of contemplating the sun, rejoices to behold the verdure. Captain Pelotte, who, I have observed, composed one of our hunting party, having invited me to the review of the Militia of Coosohatchie district, I rode with him to the muster-field near Bee'sCreek, where his troop was assembled. It was a pleasant spot of thirty acres, belonging to a school-master, who educated the children of the families in the neighbourhood. There is scarcely any contemplation more pleasing than the sight of a flock of boys and girls just let loose from school. Those whom nature designed for an active, enterprising life, will contend for being the foremost to cross the threshold of the school-door; while others of a more wary temper keep remote from the strife. A throng of boys and girls was just released from the confinement of the school, as I reached Bee's-Creek with Captain Pelotte. Our horses and they were mutually acquainted. The beasts pricked up their ears, and some of the children saluted them by name; while some, regardless of both the horses and their riders, were earnestly pursuing butterflies; some stooping to gather flowers; some chaunting songs; and all taking the road that led to the muster-field. If ever I felt the nature that breathes through Shenstone's School poem, it was on beholding this band of little men and little women. "And now Dan Phoebus gains the middle skie, And now Captain Pelotte having reviewed his soldiers, |