go, but I shall just come back again!’ meaning, that when in the field, she would be unable to work, and obliged, to return to the hospital.  ‘For this reply,’ Mr. O——­ said, ’I gave her a good lashing; it was her business to have gone into the field without answering me, and then we should have soon seen whether she could work or not; I gave it to Chloe too, for some such impudence.’  I give you the words of the conversation, which was prolonged to a great length, the overseer complaining of sham sicknesses of the slaves, and detailing the most disgusting struggle which is going on the whole time, on the one hand to inflict, and on the other, to evade oppression and injustice.  With this sauce I ate my dinner, and truly it tasted bitter.

Towards sunset I went on the river to take my rowing lesson.  A darling little canoe which carries two oars and a steersman, and rejoices in the appropriate title of the ‘Dolphin,’ is my especial vessel; and with Jack’s help and instructions, I contrived this evening to row upwards of half a mile, coasting the reed-crowned edge of the island to another very large rice mill, the enormous wheel of which is turned by the tide.  A small bank of mud and sand covered with reedy coarse grass divides the river into two arms on this side of the island; the deep channel is on the outside of this bank, and as we rowed home this evening, the tide having fallen, we scraped sand almost the whole way.  Mr. ——­’s domain, it seems to me, will presently fill up this shallow stream, and join itself to the above-mentioned mud-bank.  The whole course of this most noble river is full of shoals, banks, mud, and sand-bars, and the navigation, which is difficult to those who know it well, is utterly baffling to the inexperienced.  The fact is, that the two elements are so fused hereabouts, that there are hardly such things as earth or water proper; that which styles itself the former, is a fat, muddy, slimy sponge, that, floating half under the turbid river, looks yet saturated with the thick waves which every now and then reclaim their late dominion, and cover it almost entirely; the water, again, cloudy and yellow, like pea-soup, seems but a solution of such islands, rolling turbid and thick with alluvium, which it both gathers and deposits as it sweeps along with a swollen, smooth rapidity, that almost deceives the eye.  Amphibious creatures, alligators, serpents, and wild fowl, haunt these yet but half-formed regions, where land and water are of the consistency of hasty-pudding—­the one seeming too unstable to walk on, the other almost too thick to float in.  But then, the sky, if no human chisel ever yet cut breath, neither did any human pen ever write light; if it did, mine should spread out before you the unspeakable glories of these southern heavens, the saffron brightness of morning, the blue intense brilliancy of noon, the golden splendour and the rosy softness of sunset.  Italy and Claude Lorraine may go hang themselves together!  Heaven