To-day—­Saturday—­I took another ride of discovery round the fields by Jones’s.  I think I shall soon be able to survey this estate, I have ridden so carefully over it in every direction; but my rides are drawing to a close and even were I to remain here this must be the case unless I got up and rode under the stars in the cool of the night.  This afternoon I was obliged to drive up to St. Annie’s:  I had promised the people several times that I would do so.  I went after dinner and as late as I could, and found very considerable improvement in the whole condition of the place; the houses had all been swept, and some of them actually scoured.  The children were all quite tolerably clean; they had put slats across all their windows, and little chicken gates to the doors to keep out the poultry.  There was a poor woman lying in one of the cabins in a wretched condition.  She begged for a bandage, but I do not see of what great use that can be to her, as long as she has to hoe in the fields so many hours a day, which I cannot prevent.

Returning home, Israel undertook to pilot me across the cotton fields into the pine land; and a more excruciating process than being dragged over that very uneven surface in that wood wagon without springs I did never endure, mitigated and soothed though it was by the literally fascinating account my charioteer gave me of the rattlesnakes with which the place we drove through becomes infested as the heat increases.  I cannot say that his description of them, though more demonstrative as far as regarded his own horror of them, was really worse than that which Mr. G——­ was giving me of them yesterday.  He said they were very numerous, and were found in every direction all over the plantation, but that they did not become really vicious until quite late in the summer; until then, it appears that they generally endeavour to make off if one meets them, but during the intense heats of the latter part of July and August they never think of escaping, but at any sight or sound which they may consider inimical, they instantly coil themselves for a spring.  The most intolerable proceeding on their part, however, that he described, was their getting up into the trees, and either coiling themselves in or depending from the branches.  There is something too revolting in the idea of serpents looking down upon one from the shade of the trees to which one may betake oneself for shelter in the dreadful heat of the southern midsummer; decidedly I do not think the dog-days would be pleasant here.  The mocassin snake, which is nearly as deadly as the rattlesnake, abounds all over the island.