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few paces, expired himself. This disaster was related to me by Colonel Pastell and his son, Major Warley, and Captain Pelatte, who lived on the neighbouring plantations, and composed our hunting party.

After killing half a dozen deer, we assembled by appointment at some planter's house, whither the mothers, and wives, and daughters of the hunters had got before us in their carriages. A dinner of venison, killed the preceding hunt, smoked before us; the richest Madeira sparkled in the glass, and we forgot, in our hilarity, there was any other habitation for man but that of the woods.

In this hunting party was always to be found my pupil William Henry, who galloped through the woods, however thick or intricate; summoned his beagles after the toil of the chase with his horn; caressed the dog that had been the most eager in pursuit of the deer, and expressed his hope there would be good weather to hunt again the following Saturday.

I did not repress this ardour in my pupil. I beheld it with satisfaction; for the man doomed to pass every winter in the woods would find his life very irksome could he not partake, with his neighbours, in the diversions they afford.

Ludere qui nescit, campestribus, abstinet armis,
Indoctusque Pila, Discive, Trochive quiescit,

Ne spissa risum tollant impune Corona.

[* Epist., II., (Ars Poet.), 3, 379.]

HOR.*

Wolves were sometimes heard on the plantation in the night; and, when incited by hunger, would attack a calf and devour it. One night, however, some wolves endeavouring to seize on a calf, the dam defended her offspring with such determined resolution, that the hungry assailants were compelled to retreat with the tail only of the calf, which one of them had bitten off.

Wild cats are very common and mischievous in the woods. When a sow is ready to litter, she is always enclosed with a fence or rails, for, otherwise, the wild cats would devour the pigs.

I generally accompanied my pupil into the woods in his shooting excursions, determined both to make havoc among birds and beasts. of every description. Sometimes we fired in vollies at the flocks of doves that frequent the corn fields; sometimes we discharged our pieces at the wild geese, whose empty cackling betrayed them; and once we brought down some paroquets that were directing their course over our heads to Georgia. Nor was it an undelightful task to fire at the squirrels on the tops of the highest trees, who, however artful, could seldom elude the shot of my eager companion.

The affability and tenderness of this charming family in the bosom of the woods will be ever cherished in my breast, and long re

corded, I hope, in this page. My wants were always anticipated. The family Library was transported without entreaty into my chamber; paper and the apparatus for writing were placed on my table; and once, having lamented that my stock of segars was nearly exhausted, a negro was dispatched seventy miles to Charleston for a supply of the best Spanish.

I conclude my description of this elegant family with an observation that will apply to every other that I have been domesticated in, on the Western Continent;-that cheerfulness and quiet always predominated, and that I never saw a brow clouded, or a lip opened in anger.

One diminution to the happiness of an European in the woods of Carolina is the reflection that every want is supplied him by slaves. Whatever may be urged on the subject of negroes, as the voice of millions could lend no support to falsehood, so no casuistry can justify the keeping of slaves. That negroes are human beings is confessed by their partaking with the rest of mankind the faculty of speech, and power of combination. Now no man being born a slave, but with his original rights, the supposed property of the master in the slave, is an usurpation and not a right; because no one from being a person can become a thing. From this conviction

should every good citizen promote the emancipation of Negroes in America.

The negroes on the plantation, including house-servants and children, amounted to a hundred, of whom the average price being respectively seventy pounds, made them aggregately worth seven thousand to their possessor. Two families lived in one hut, and such was their unconquerable propensity to steal that they pilfered from each other. I have heard masters lament this defect in their negroes. But what else can be expected from man in so degraded a condition, that among the ancients the same word implied both a slave and a thief.

Since the introduction of the culture of cotton in the State of South Carolina, the race of negroes has increased. Both men and women work in the field, and the labour of the rice-plantation formerly prevented the pregnant Negress from bringing forth a longlived offspring. It may be established as a maxim that, on a plantation where there are many children, the work has been moderate.

It may be incredible to some that the children of the most distinguished families in Carolina are suckled by negro women. Each child has its Momma, whose gestures and accent it will necessarily copy, for children, we all know, are imitative beings. It is not unusual to hear an elegant lady say, Richard

always grieves when Quasheehaw is whipped, because she suckled him. If Rousseau in his Emile could inveigh against the French mother, who consigned her child to a woman of her own color to suckle, how would his indignation have been raised to behold a smiling babe tugging with its roseate lips at a dug of a size and color to affright a Satyr?

Of genius in negroes many instances may be recorded. It is true that Mr. Jefferson has pronounced the Poems of Phillis Whately below the dignity of criticism,* and it is seldom safe to differ in judgment from the Author of Notes on Virginia. But her conceptions are often lofty, and her versification often surprises with unexpected refinement. Ladd, the Carolina poet, in enumerating the bards of his country, dwells with encomium on Whately's polished verse "; nor is his praise undeserved, for often it will be found to glide in the stream of melody. Her lines

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[* Notes on Virginia, ch. XIV.—“ Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. . . Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately but it could not produce a poet. . . Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition, yet his letters do more honor to the heart than the head." Joseph Brown Ladd of Rhode Island, lived for two years (1783-1785) in South Carolina. His poems were not published in book form until 1832. Gilbert Imlay, who described Kentucky, published in 1793, a three-volume novel, The Emigrants, a story of life in America.-John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America, appeared in 1776.]

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