We cross the threshold of one, and are accosted by a female who, speaking in musical accents, invites us to sit down.  She has none of Afric’s blood in her veins;-no! her features are beautifully olive, and the intonation of her voice discovers a different origin.  Her figure is tall and well-formed; she has delicately-formed hands and feet, long, tapering fingers, well-rounded limbs, and an oval face, shaded with melancholy.  How reserved she seems, and yet how quickly she moves her graceful figure!  Now she places her right hand upon her finely-arched forehead, parts the heavy folds of glossy hair that hang carelessly over her brown shoulders, and with a half-suppressed smile answers our salutation.  We are welcome in her humble cabin; but her dark, languishing eyes, so full of intensity, watch us with irresistible suspicion.  They are the symbols of her inward soul; they speak through that melancholy pervading her countenance!  The deep purple of her cheek is softened by it, while it adds to her face that calm beauty which moves the gentle of our nature.  How like a woman born to fill a loftier sphere than that to which a cruel law subjects her, she seems!

Neither a field nor a house servant, the uninitiated may be at a loss to know what sphere on the plantation is her’s?  She is the mother of Annette, a little girl of remarkable beauty, sitting at her side, playing with her left hand.  Annette is fair, has light auburn hair-not the first tinge of her mother’s olive invades her features.  Her little cheerful face is lit up with a smile, and while toying with the rings on her mother’s fingers, asks questions that person does not seem inclined to answer.  Vivacious and sprightly, she chatters and lisps until we become eager for her history.  “It’s only a child’s history,” some would say.  But the mother displays so much fondness for it; and yet we become more and more excited by the strange manner in which she tries to suppress an outward display of her feelings.  At times she pats it gently on the head, runs her hands through its hair, and twists the ends into tiny ringlets.

In the next cabin we meet the shortish figure of a tawny female, whose Indian features stand boldly out.  Her high cheek bones, long glossy black hair, and flashing eyes, are the indexes of her pedigree.  “My master says I am a slave:”  in broken accents she answers our question.  As she sits in her chair near the fire-place of bricks, a male issue of the mixed blood toddles round and round her, tossing her long coarse hair every time he makes a circut.  The little boy is much fairer than the brawny daughter who seems his mother.  Playful, and even mischievous, he delights in pulling the hair which curls over his head; and when the woman calls him he answers with a childish heedlessness, and runs for the door.  Reader! this woman’s name is Ellen Juvarna; she has youth on her side, and though she retains the name of her ancient sire, is proud of being master’s mistress.  She tells us