of an enormous tree that overtopped the house, from the upper windows of which oranges have been gathered from off its branches, and which, one year, bore the incredible number of 8,542 oranges.  Mr. K——­ assured me of this as a positive fact, of which he had at the time made the entry in his journal, considering such a crop from a single tree well worthy of record.  Mr. ——­ was called out this evening to listen to a complaint of over work, from a gang of pregnant women.  I did not stay to listen to the details of their petition, for I am unable to command myself on such occasions, and Mr. ——­ seemed positively degraded in my eyes, as he stood enforcing upon these women the necessity of their fulfilling their appointed tasks.  How honorable he would have appeared to me begrimed with the sweat and soil of the coarsest manual labour, to what he then seemed, setting forth to these wretched, ignorant women, as a duty, their unpaid exacted labour!  I turned away in bitter disgust.  I hope this sojourn among Mr. ——­’s slaves may not lessen my respect for him, but I fear it; for the details of slave holding are so unmanly, letting alone every other consideration, that I know not how anyone, with the spirit of a man, can condescend to them.

I have been out again on the river, rowing.  I find nothing new.  Swamps crowned with perfect evergreens are the only land (that’s Irish!) about here, and, of course, turn which way I will, the natural features of river and shore are the same.  I do not weary of these most exquisite watery woods, but you will of my mention of them, I fear.  Adieu.

* * * * *

Dearest E——.  Since I last wrote to you I have been actually engaged in receiving and returning visits; for even to this ultima thule of all civilisation do these polite usages extend.  I have been called upon by several families residing in and about Darien, and rowed over in due form to acknowledge the honour.  How shall I describe Darien to you?  The abomination of desolation is but a poor type of its forlorn appearance, as, half buried in sand, its straggling, tumble-down wooden houses peer over the muddy bank of the thick slimy river.  The whole town lies in a bed of sand—­side walks, or mid walks, there be none distinct from each other; at every step I took my feet were ankle deep in the soil, and I had cause to rejoice that I was booted for the occasion.  Our worthy doctor, whose lady I was going to visit, did nothing but regret that I had not allowed him to provide me a carriage, though the distance between his house and the landing is not a quarter of a mile.  The magnitude of the exertion seemed to fill him with amazement, and he over and over again repeated how impossible it would be to prevail on any of the ladies there to take such a walk.  The houses seemed scattered about here and there, apparently without any design, and looked, for the most part, either unfinished or ruinous.  One feature of the scene alone recalled the villages