I sat for a long time with Mrs. A——­, and a friend of hers staying with her, a Mrs. A——­, lately from Florida.  The latter seemed to me a remarkable woman; her conversation was extremely interesting.  She had been stopping at Brunswick, at the hotel where Dr. H——­ murdered young W——­, and said that the mingled ferocity and blackguardism of the men who frequented the house had induced her to cut short her stay there, and come on to her friend Mrs. A——­’s.  We spoke of that terrible crime which had occurred only the day after she left Brunswick, and both ladies agreed that there was not the slightest chance of Dr. H——­’s being punished in any way for the murder he had committed; that shooting down a man who had offended you was part of the morals and manners of the southern gentry, and that the circumstance was one of quite too frequent occurrence to cause any sensation, even in the small community where it obliterated one of the principal members of the society.  If the accounts given by these ladies of the character of the planters in this part of the south may be believed, they must be as idle, arrogant, ignorant, dissolute, and ferocious as that mediaeval chivalry to which they are fond of comparing themselves; and these are southern women, and should know the people among whom they live.

We had a long discussion on the subject of slavery, and they took as usual the old ground of justifying the system, where it was administered with kindness and indulgence.  It is not surprising that women should regard the question from this point of view; they are very seldom just, and are generally treated with more indulgence than justice by men.  They were very patient of my strong expressions of reprobation of the whole system, and Mrs. A——­, bidding me good-bye, said that, for aught she could tell, I might be right, and might have been led down here by Providence to be the means of some great change in the condition of the poor coloured people.

I rode home pondering on the strange fate that has brought me to this place so far from where I was born, this existence so different in all its elements from that of my early years and former associations.  If I believed Mrs. A——­’s parting words, I might perhaps verify them; perhaps I may yet verify although I do not believe them.  On my return home, I found a most enchanting bundle of flowers, sent to me by Mrs. G——­; pomegranate blossoms, roses, honeysuckle, everything that blooms two months later with us in Pennsylvania.

I told you I had a great desire to visit Little St. Simon’s, and the day before yesterday I determined to make an exploring expedition thither.  I took M——­ and the children, little imagining what manner of day’s work was before me.  Six men rowed us in the ‘Lily,’ and Israel brought the wood wagon after us in a flat.  Our navigation was a very intricate one, all through sea swamps and marshes, mud-banks and sand-banks, with great white shells and bleaching bones stuck upon