and women. I leave my reader to draw the inference.

Of the understanding of negroes, the masters in Carolina have a very mean opinion. But it is obvious to a stranger of discernment, that the sentiments of black Cuffy who waits at table, are often not less just or elevated than those of his white ruler, into whose hand, Fortune, by one of her freaks, has put the whip of power. Nor is there much difference in their language; for many planters seem incapable of displaying their sovereignty, by any other mode than menaces and imprecations. Indeed, it must occur to every one, that were things to be re-organized in their natural order, the master would in many parts of the globe, exchange with his servant.

An Englishman cannot but draw a proud comparison between his own country and Carolina. He feels with a glow of enthusiasm the force of the poet's exclamation:*

"Slaves cannot breathe in England!

They touch our country, and their shackles fall;
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of their rights."

[*Duyckinck (Vol. I, p. 563) describes Davis's Travels as "a book of pleasant exaggerations." Throughout this book it must be remembered that the author is a novelist, and a sentimentalist. Slavery as it existed in the Southern States was a rudimentary education. If the design was to bring the black man out of Guinea into modern handicraftsmanship, it is difficult to see how the introduction could have been better effected]

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It is, indeed, grating to an Englishman to mingle with society in Carolina; for the people, however well-bred in other respects, have no delicacy before a stranger in what relates to their slaves. These wretches are execrated for every involuntary offence; but negroes endure execration without emotion, for they say, when Mossa curse, he break no bone. But every master does not confine himself to oaths; and I have heard a man say, By heaven, my Negurs talk the worst English of any in Carolina: that boy just now called a bason a roundsomething: take him to the driver! let him have a dozen!

Exposed to such wanton cruelty the negroes frequently run away; they flee into the woods, where they are wet with the rains of heaven, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter. Life must be supported; hunger incites to depredation, and the poor wretches are often shot like the beasts of prey. When taken, the men are put in irons, and the boys have their necks encircled with a "pot-hook."

The Charleston papers abound with advertisements for fugitive slaves. I have a curious advertisement now before me. "Stop the

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runaway. Fifty dollars reward. Whereas

my waiting fellow, Will, having eloped "from me last Saturday, without any provocation, (it being known that I am a humane master) the above reward will be

paid to any one who will lodge the afore"said slave in some jail or deliver him to "me on my plantation at Liberty Hall. "Will may be known by the incisions of the "whip on his back; and I suspect has taken แ the road to Coosohatchie, 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 color 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 96 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 shade. My journal is now before me. At eight in the morning, when our ship 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

*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 11,1.

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.

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 cœlum,
Una ut non raro est estus hiemsque die.

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 า 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

[* A letter from Georgia is given in American Husbandry, London, 1775 (II, 7). The writer says, “In the observations I have made on the climate's being uncommonly hot, I confine myself entirely to the hottest part of the summer, July, August, and part of September, and perhaps, but not always, a week the latter end of June. As to the rest of the year, you have no idea of the charms of this climate at a distance from the sea."]