captive, Israel killed, stuffed, and presented it to me for preservation as a trophy, and made me extremely happy by informing me that there was a nest of them where this one was found.  I think with terror of S——­ running about with her little socks not reaching half-way up her legs, and her little frocks not reaching half-way down them.  However, we shall probably not make acquaintance with many more of these natives of Georgia, as we are to return as soon as possible now to the north.  We shall soon be free again.

This morning I rode to the burnt district, and attempted to go through it at St. Clair’s, but unsuccessfully:  it was impossible to penetrate through the charred and blackened thickets.  In the afternoon I walked round the point, and visited the houses of the people who are our nearest neighbours.  I found poor Edie in sad tribulation at the prospect of resuming her field labour.  It is really shameful treatment of a woman just after child labour.  She was confined exactly three weeks ago to-day, and she tells me she is ordered out to field work on Monday.  She seems to dread the approaching hardships of her task-labour extremely.  Her baby was born dead, she thinks in consequence of a fall she had while carrying a heavy weight of water.  She is suffering great pain in one of her legs and sides, and seems to me in a condition utterly unfit for any work, much less hoeing in the fields; but I dare not interfere to prevent this cruelty.  She says she has already had to go out to work three weeks after her confinement with each of her other children, and does not complain of it as anything special in her case.  She says that is now the invariable rule of the whole plantation, though it used not to be so formerly.

I have let my letter lie since I wrote the above, dear E——­; but as mine is a story without beginning, middle, or end, it matters extremely little where I leave it off or where I take it up; and if you have not, between my wood rides and sick slaves, come to Falstaff’s conclusion that I have ‘damnable iteration,’ you are patient of sameness.  But the days are like each other; and the rides and the people, and, alas! their conditions, do not vary.

To-day, however, my visit to the infirmary was marked by an event which has not occurred before—­the death of one of the poor slaves while I was there.  I found on entering the first ward,—­to use a most inapplicable term for the dark, filthy, forlorn room I have so christened,—­an old negro called Friday lying on the ground.  I asked what ailed him, and was told he was dying.  I approached him, and perceived, from the glazed eyes and the feeble rattling breath, that he was at the point of expiring.  His tattered shirt and trousers barely covered his poor body; his appearance was that of utter exhaustion from age and feebleness; he had nothing under him but a mere handful of straw that did not cover the earth he was stretched on; and under his head, by way