I shall shortly set out for Charleston, South Carolina.

Letter X.

A Journey from Richmond to Charleston.

Charleston, March 6, 1843.

I left Richmond, on the afternoon of a keen March day, in the railway train for Petersburg, where we arrived after dark, and, therefore, could form no judgment of the appearance of the town.  Here we were transferred to another train of cars.  Among the passengers was a lecturer on Mesmerism with his wife, and a young woman who accompanied them as a mesmeric subject.  The young woman, accustomed to be easily put to sleep, seemed to get through the night very comfortably; but the spouse of the operator appeared to be much disturbed by the frequent and capricious opening of the door by the other passengers, which let in torrents of intensely cold air from without, and chid the offenders with a wholesome sharpness.

About two o’clock in the morning, we reached Blakely on the Roanoke, where we were made to get out of the cars, and were marched in long procession for about a quarter of a mile down to the river.  A negro walked before us to light our way, bearing a blazing pine torch, which scattered sparks like a steam-engine, and a crowd of negroes followed us, bearing our baggage.  We went down a steep path to the Roanoke, where we found a little old steamboat ready for us, and in about fifteen minutes were struggling upward against the muddy and rapid current.  In little more than an hour, we had proceeded two miles and a half up the river, and were landed at a place called Weldon.  Here we took the cars for Wilmington, in North Carolina, and shabby vehicles they were, denoting our arrival in a milder climate, by being extremely uncomfortable for cold weather.  As morning dawned, we saw ourselves in the midst of the pine forests of North Carolina.  Vast tracts of level sand, overgrown with the long-leaved pine, a tall, stately tree, with sparse and thick twigs, ending in long brushes of leaves, murmuring in the strong cold wind, extended everywhere around us.  At great distances from each other, we passed log-houses, and sometimes a dwelling of more pretensions, with a piazza, and here and there fields in which cotton or maize had been planted last year, or an orchard with a few small mossy trees.  The pools beside the roads were covered with ice just formed, and the negroes, who like a good fire at almost any season of the year, and who find an abundant supply of the finest fuel in these forests, had made blazing fires of the resinous wood of the pine, wherever they were at work.  The tracts of sandy soil, we perceived, were interspersed with marshes, crowded with cypress-trees, and verdant at their borders with a growth of evergreens, such as the swamp-bay, the gallberry, the holly, and various kinds of evergreen creepers, which are unknown to our northern climate, and which became more frequent as we proceeded.