On Sunday last, I rode round the woods near St. Annie’s and met with a monstrous snake, which Jack called a chicken snake; but whether because it particularly affected poultry as its diet, or for what other reason, he could not tell me.  Nearer home, I encountered another gliding creature, that stopped a moment just in front of my horse’s feet, as if it was too much afraid of being trampled upon to get out of the way; it was the only snake animal I ever saw that I did not think hideous.  It was of a perfectly pure apple green colour, with a delicate line of black like a collar round its throat; it really was an exquisite worm, and Jack said it was harmless.  I did not, however, think it expedient to bring it home in my bosom, though if ever I have a pet snake, it shall be such an one.

In the afternoon, I drove to Jones’s with several supplies of flannel for the rheumatic women and old men.  We have ridden over to Hamilton again, to pay another visit to the F——­s, and on our way passed an enormous rattlesnake, hanging dead on the bough of a tree.  Dead as it was, it turned me perfectly sick with horror, and I wished very much to come back to the north immediately, where these are not the sort of blackberries that grow on every bush.  The evening air now, after the heat of the day, is exquisitely mild, and the nights dry and wholesome, the whole atmosphere indescribably fragrant with the perfume of flowers; and as I stood, before going to bed last night, watching the slow revolving light on Sapelo Island, that warns the ships from the dangerous bar at the river’s mouth, and heard the measured pulse of the great Atlantic waters on the beach, I thought no more of rattlesnakes—­no more, for one short while, of slavery.  How still, and sweet, and solemn, it was!

We have been paying more friendly and neighbourly visits, or rather returning them; and the recipients of these civilised courtesies on our last calling expedition were the family one member of which was a party concerned in that barbarous challenge I wrote you word about.  Hitherto that very brutal and bloodthirsty cartel appears to have had no result.  You must not on that account imagine that it will have none.  At the north, were it possible for a duel intended to be conducted on such savage terms to be matter of notoriety, the very horror of the thing would create a feeling of grotesqueness, and the antagonists in such a proposed encounter would simply incur an immense amount of ridicule and obloquy.  But here nobody is astonished and nobody ashamed of such preliminaries to a mortal combat between two gentlemen, who propose firing at marks over each other’s hearts, and cutting off each other’s heads; and though this agreeable party of pleasure has not come off yet, there seems to be no reason why it should not at the first convenient season.  Reflecting upon all which, I rode not without trepidation through Colonel H——­’s grounds, and up to his house.  Mr. W——­’s