it was cold, and exclaimed against his negroes for keeping so bad a fire. Here, Syphax, said he, "be quick and bring more wood; you have made, you rascal, a Charleston fire; fetch a stout back log, or I'll make a back-log of you.

The exclamations of the landlord brought his wife into the room. She curtesied, and made many eloquent apologies for the badness of the fire; but added that her waiting man, Will, had run away, and having whipped Syphax till his back was raw, she was willing to try what gentle means would do.

A dinner of venison, and a pint of Madeira, made me forget I had walked thirty miles; and it being little more than four o'clock, I proceeded forward on my journey. The vapours of a Spanish segar promoted cogitation, and I was lamenting the inequality of conditions in the world, when night overtook

me.

I now redoubled my pace, not without the apprehension that I should have to seek my lodgings in some tree, to avoid the beasts that prowled nightly in the woods; but the moon, which rose to direct me in my path, alienated my perturbation, and in another hour I descried the blaze of a friendly fire through the casements of a log-house. Imaginary are worse than real calamities; and the apprehension of sleeping in the woods was by far more

painful than the actual experience of it would have been. The same Being who sends trials can also inspire fortitude.

The place I had reached was Asheepo, a hamlet consisting of three or more log-houses; and the inhabitants of every sex and age had collected round a huge elephant, which was journeying with his master to Savannah.

Fortune had therefore brought me into unexpected company, and I could not but admire the docility of the elephant, who, in solemn majesty, received the gifts of the children with his trunk. But not so the monkey. This man of Lord Monboddo was inflamed with rage at the boys and girls; nor could the rebukes of his master calm the transports of his fury.*

I entered the log-house which accommodated travellers. An old negro-man had squatted himself before the fire. Well, old man. said I, why don't you go out to look at the elephant? Hie! Massa, he calf! In fact the elephant came from Asia, and the negro from Africa, where he had seen the same species of animal, but of much greater magnitude.

Traveling, says Shakespeare, acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows; and there

[* Want of speech may have been no disadvantage at such a juncture. Lord Monboddo, in his Origin and Progress of Language, 6 Vols., 1773-1792, 'maintained that the orangoutang, was a class of the human species and that its want of speech was merely accidental.']

being only one bed in the log-house, I slept that night with the elephant driver. Mr. Owen was a native of Wales, but he had been a great traveller, and his travels in his pocket. a journey more than good road; so I departed after breakfast from Asheepo, with Mr. Owen, his elephant, and his monkey.

carried a map of Nothing shortens company on the

Mr. Owen related to me the wonders of his elephant, which at some future day, I may perhaps publish in a separate treatise; but they would be irrevalant to my present journey, which towards noon I was left to prosecute alone. The elephant, however docile, would not travel without his dinner; and Mr. Owen halted under a pine-tree to feed the mute companion of his toils.

For my own part, I dined at a solitary loghouse in the woods, upon exquisite venison. My host was a small planter, who cultivated a little rice, and maintained a wife and four children with his rifled-barrel-gun. He had been Overseer to a Colonel Fishborne, and owned half a dozen negroes; but he observed to me his property was running about at large, for four of them had absconded.

As I proposed to make Pocotaligo the end of my day's journey, I walked forward at a moderate pace; but towards evening I was roused from the reveries into which my walking had

plunged me by a conflagration in the woods. On either side of the road the trees were in flames, which, extending to their branches, assumed an appearance both terrific and grotesque. Through these woods, belching flames and rolling smoke, I had to travel nearly a mile, when the sound of the negro's axe chopping of wood, announced that I was near Pocotaligo.

At Pocotaligo I learned that the conflagration in the woods arose from the carelessness of some backwoods-men, who having neglected to extinguish their fires, the flames had extended in succession to the herbage and the trees.*

I was somewhat surprised on entering the tavern at Pocotaligo to behold sixteen or more chairs placed round a table which was covered with the choicest dishes; but my surprise ceased when the Savannah and Charleston stage-coaches stopped at the door, and the passengers flocked to the fire before which I was sitting. In the Charleston coach came a party of comedians. Of these itinerant heroes the greater part were my countrymen;

[* Naturally, the early Traveller in this country [1776-1800] often mentions forest fires. Isaac Weld gives a particularly vivid description of a fire in the pine woods,-Travels through the States of North America, &c. London, 1800. Vol. I, pp. 161-162. Cf. also Travels through the Interior Parts of America [Thomas Anburey], London, 1789. Vol. II, pp. 412

and, as I was not travelling to see Englishmen, but Americans, I was not sorry when they retired to bed.*

I was in a worse condition at Pocotaligo than Asheepo; for at Pocotaligo the beds were so small that they would hold only respectively one person. But I pity the traveller who takes umbrage against America, because its houses of entertainment cannot always accommodate him to his wishes. If he images no other happiness to himself in travelling, but what is to be obtained from repasts that minister to luxury, and beds distinguished by softness, let him confine his excursions to the cities of polished Europe. The Western Continent can supply the Traveller an employment more noble than a minute attention to the casualties of the road, which are afterwards to be enlarged upon with studied declamation. The world is called upon to sympathize with the sufferer; he who at home had been accustomed to the luxury of a bed, groaned the night out in America on the rack of a mattress; and for this the country is to be execrated, and the beautiful scenes of nature beheld with a jaundiced eye.

Finding there was no bed to be procured, I seated myself in a nook of the chimney, called

[* Two years later John Bernard, the English comedian, might have been of the company. Cf. his Retrospections of America, 1797-1811. New York, 1887, Chapter IX.]