to undress the little creatures and give them a warm bath; the mothers looked on in unutterable dismay, and one of them, just as her child was going to be put into the tub, threw into it all the clothes she had just taken off it, as she said, to break the unusual shock of the warm water.  I immediately rescued them, not but what they were quite as much in want of washing as the baby, but it appeared, upon enquiry, that the woman had none others to dress the child in, when it should have taken its bath; they were immediately wrung and hung by the fire to dry, and the poor little patients having undergone this novel operation were taken out and given to their mothers.  Anything, however, much more helpless and inefficient than these poor ignorant creatures you cannot conceive; they actually seemed incapable of drying or dressing their own babies, and I had to finish their toilet myself.  As it is only a very few years since the most absurd and disgusting customs have become exploded among ourselves, you will not, of course, wonder that these poor people pin up the lower part of their infants, bodies, legs and all, in red flannel as soon as they are born, and keep them in the selfsame envelope till it literally falls off.

In the next room I found a woman lying on the floor in a fit of epilepsy, barking most violently.  She seemed to excite no particular attention or compassion; the women said she was subject to these fits, and took little or no notice of her, as she lay barking like some enraged animal on the ground.  Again I stood in profound ignorance, sickening with the sight of suffering, which I knew not how to alleviate, and which seemed to excite no commiseration, merely from the sad fact of its frequent occurrence.  Returning to the house, I passed up the ‘street.’  It was between eleven o’clock and noon, and the people were taking their first meal in the day.  By the by, E——­, how do you think Berkshire county farmers would relish labouring hard all day upon two meals of Indian corn or hominy?  Such is the regulation on this plantation, however, and I beg you to bear in mind that the negroes on Mr. ——­’s estate, are generally considered well off.  They go to the fields at daybreak, carrying with them their allowance of food for the day, which towards noon, and not till then, they eat, cooking it over a fire, which they kindle as best they can, where they are working.  Their second meal in the day is at night, after their labour is over, having worked, at the very least, six hours without intermission of rest or refreshment since their noon-day meal (properly so called, for ’tis meal, and nothing else).  Those that I passed to-day, sitting on their doorsteps, or on the ground round them eating, were the people employed at the mill and threshing-floor.  As these are near to the settlement, they had time to get their food from the cook-shop.  Chairs, tables, plates, knives, forks, they had none; they sat, as I before