I visited Bonaventure, which I formerly described in one of my letters.  It has lost the interest of utter solitude and desertion which it then had.  A Gothic cottage has been built on the place, and the avenues of live-oaks have been surrounded with an inclosure, for the purpose of making a cemetery on the spot.  Yet there they stand, as solemn as ever, lifting and stretching their long irregular branches overhead, hung with masses and festoons of gray moss.  It almost seemed, when I looked up to them, as if the clouds had come nearer to the earth than is their wont, and formed themselves into the shadowy ribs of the vault above me.  The drive to Bonaventure at this season of the year is very beautiful, though the roads are sandy; it is partly along an avenue of tall trees, and partly through the woods, where the dog-wood and azalea and thorn-trees are in blossom, and the ground is sprinkled with flowers.  Here and there are dwellings beside the road.  “They are unsafe the greater part of the year,” said the gentleman who drove me out, and who spoke from professional knowledge, “a summer residence in them is sure to bring dangerous fevers.”  Savannah is a healthy city, but it is like Rome, imprisoned by malaria.

The city of Savannah, since I saw it six years ago, has enlarged considerably, and the additions made to it increase its beauty.  The streets have been extended on the south side, on the same plan as those of the rest of the city, with small parks at short distances from each other, planted with trees; and the new houses are handsome and well-built.  The communications opened with the interior by long lines of railway have, no doubt, been the principal occasion of this prosperity.  These and the Savannah river send enormous quantities of cotton to the Savannah market.  One should see, with the bodily eye, the multitude of bales of this commodity accumulating in the warehouses and elsewhere, in order to form an idea of the extent to which it is produced in the southern states—­long trains of cars heaped with bales, steamer after steamer loaded high with bales coming down the rivers, acres of bales on the wharves, acres of bales at the railway stations—­one should see all this, and then carry his thoughts to the millions of the civilized world who are clothed by this great staple of our country.

I came to this place by steamer to Charleston and then by railway.  The line of the railway, one hundred and thirty-seven miles in length, passes through the most unproductive district of South Carolina.  It is in fact nothing but a waste of forest, with here and there an open field, half a dozen glimpses of plantations, and about as many villages, none of which are considerable, and some of which consist of not more than half a dozen houses.  Aiken, however, sixteen miles before you reach the Savannah river, has a pleasant aspect.  It is situated on a comparatively high tract of country, sandy and barren, but healthy, and hither the planters resort in the hot months from their homes in the less salubrious districts.  Pretty cottages stand dispersed among the oaks and pines, and immediately west of the place the country descends in pleasant undulations towards the valley of the Savannah.