It was made of logs of wood, (a corduroy road,) and so dreadfully rough and unequal, that the drawing a coach over it at all seemed perfectly miraculous. I expected every moment that we must be overturned into the marsh, through which we splashed, with hardly any intermission, the whole night long. Their drivers in this part of the country deserve infinite praise both for skill and care; but the roadmakers, I think, are beyond all praise for their noble confidence in what skill and care can accomplish.

You will readily imagine how thankfully I saw the first whitening of daylight in the sky. I do not know that any morning was ever more welcome to me than that which found us still surrounded by the pine-swamps of North Carolina, which, brightened by the morning sun, and breathed through by the morning air, lost something of their dreary desolateness to my senses. However, I had passed the night in terror; for when one carries two young babies along with one, it is astonishing how much one's appetite for adventure slackens, and how very little desirous one is of breaking one's neck, or even running little agreeably-exciting risks of it. I remember the time, and that not very far off either, when the roughest road was the one I should have chosen ; but these precious burthens make one careful and cowardly, and I care not how level the way is over which I lead these poor little fellow-wayfarers. Not long after daybreak we arrived at a place called Stantonsborough. I do not know whether that is the name of the district, or what; for I saw no village,-nothing but the one lonely house in the wood at which we stopped. I should have mentioned, that the unfortunate individual who took our coachman's place outside, towards daybreak became so perished with cold, that an exchange was effected between them, and thus the privacy (if such it could be called) of our carriage was invaded, in spite of the promise which my husband had received to the contrary. As I am nursing my own baby, and have been compelled to travel all day and all night, of course this was a circumstance of no small annoyance to me; but as our company was again increased some time after, and that subsequently I had to travel in a railroad-car that held upwards of twenty people, I had to resign myself to this, among the other miseries of this most miserable journey.

As we alighted from our coach, we encountered the comical spectacle of the two coach-loads of gentlemen who had travelled the same route as ourselves, with wrist-bands and coat-cuffs turned back, performing their morning ablutions all together at a long wooden dresser in the open air, though the morning was piercing cold. Their toilet accommodations were quite of the most primitive order imaginable, as indeed were ours. We (the women) were all shown into one small room, the whole furniture of which consisted of a chair and wooden bench: upon the latter stood one bason, one ewer, and a relic of soap, apparently of great antiquity. Before, however, we could avail ourselves of these ample means of cleanliness, we were summoned down to breakfast; but as we had travelled all night, and all the previous day, and were to travel all the ensuing day and night, I preferred washing to eating, and determined, if I could not do both, at least to accomplish the first. There was neither towel, nor glass for one's teeth, nor hostess or chambermaid to appeal to. I ran through all the rooms on the floor, of which the doors were open; but though in one I found a magnificent veneered chest of drawers, and large looking-glass, neither of the above articles were discoverable. Again the savage passion for orna

ment occurred to me as I looked at this piece of furniture, which might have adorned the most luxurious bed-room of the wealthiest citizen in New York-here in this wilderness, in a house which seemed but just cut out of the trees, where a tin pan was brought to me for a bason, and where the only kitchen, of which the window of our room, to our sorrow, commanded an uninterrupted prospect, was an open shed, not fit to stable a well-kept horse in. As I found nothing that I could take possession of in the shape of towel or tumbler, I was obliged to wait on the stairs, and catch one of the dirty black girls who were running to and fro serving the breakfast-room. Upon asking one of these nymphs for a towel, she held up to me a horrible cloth, which, but for the evidence to the contrary which their filthy surface presented, I should have supposed had been used to clean the floors. Upon my objecting to this, she flounced away, disgusted, I presume, with my fastidiousness, and appeared no more. As I leaned over the bannisters in a state of considerable despondency, I espied a man who appeared to be the host himself, and to him I ventured to prefer my humble petition for a clean towel. He immediately snatched from the dresser where the gentlemen had been washing themselves a wet and dirty towel, which lay by one of the basins, and offered it to me. Upon my suggesting that that was not a clean towel, he looked at me from head to foot with ineffable amazement, but at length desired one of the negroes to fetch me the unusual luxury.

Of the breakfast at this place no words can give any idea. There were plates full of unutterable-looking things, which made one feel as if one should never swallow food again. There were some eggs, all begrimed with smoke, and powdered with cinders; some unbaked dough, cut into little lumps, by way of bread; and a white hard substance, calling itself butter, which had an infinitely nearer resemblance to tallow. The mixture presented to us by way of tea was absolutely undrinkable; and when I begged for a glass of milk, they brought a tumbler covered with dust and dirt, full of such sour stuff that I was obliged to put it aside, after endeavouring to taste it. Thus refreshed, we set forth again through the eternal pine-lands, on and on, the tall stems rising all round us for miles and miles in dreary monotony, like a spell-land of dismal enchantment, to which there seemed no end. Frequently these huge pine-trees were barked half way up on one side, the turpentine, the sole valuable produce of the country, distilling in the sun from the wounded trunk. North Carolina is, I believe, the poorest state in the Union: the part of it through which we travelled should seem to indicate as much. From Suffolk to Wilmington we did not pass a single town,-scarcely anything deserving the name of a village. The few detached houses on the road were mean and beggarly in their appearance; and the people whom we saw when the coach stopped had a squalid, and at the same time reckless air, which at once bore witness to the unfortunate influences of their existence. Not the least of these is the circumstance that their subsistence is derived in great measure from the spontaneous produce of the land, which yielding without cultivation the timber and turpentine, by the sale of which they are mainly supported, denies to them all the blessings which flow from labour. How is it that the fable ever originated of God's having cursed man with the doom of toil? How is it that men have ever been blind to the exceeding profitableness of labour, even for its own sake, whose moral harvest alone - industry, economy, patience, foresight, knowledge-is in itself an exceeding great

reward, to which add the physical blessings which wait on this universal law, health, strength, activity, cheerfulness, the content that springs from honest exertion, and the lawful pride that grows from conquered difficulty. How invariably have the inhabitants of southern countries, whose teeming soil produced, unurged, the means of life, been cursed with indolence, with recklessness, with the sleepy slothfulness which, while basking in the sunshine, and gathering the earth's spontaneous fruits, satisfied itself with this animal existence, forgetting all the nobler purposes of life in the mere ease of living? Therefore, too, southern lands have been always the prey of northern conquerors; therefore the bleak regions of upper Europe and Asia have poured forth from time to time the hungry hordes, whose iron sinews swept the nerveless children of the gardens of the earth from the face of their idle paradises; and, but for this stream of keener life and nobler energy, it would be difficult to imagine a more complete race of lotos-eaters than would now cumber the fairest regions of the earth. Doubtless it is to counteract the enervating effects of soil and climate that this northern tide of vigorous life flows for ever towards the countries of the sun, that the races may be renewed, and the earth reclaimed, and the world, and all its various tribes, rescued from disease and decay by the influence of the stern northern vitality, searching and strong, and purifying as the keen piercing winds that blow from that quarter of the heavens. To descend to rather a familiar illustration of this, it is really quite curious to observe how many New-England adventurers come to the southern states, and bringing their enterprising active character to bear upon the means of wealth, which to the north they lack, but which abound in these more favoured regions, return home, after a short season of exertion, laden with the spoils of the indolent southerners. The southern people are growing poorer every day, in the midst of their slaves and their vast landed estates; whilst every day sees the arrival amongst them of some pennyless Yankee, who presently turns the very ground he stands upon into wealth, and departs a lord of riches at the end of a few years, leaving the sleepy population among whom he has amassed them floated still farther down the tide of dwindling prosperity. It is difficult to imagine, however, that any energy- even that of a Yankee could make much of a tract of pine-swamp, such as is the estate of most North-Carolinians; and when to the disadvantages of a barren soil and hot climate are added those of slave-labour and gold-mines, it is no wonder that a population such as the pinelanders of that state should spring up, the result of so many evil influences.

At a small place called Waynesborough, we had to get out of the stage-coaches we were in, and, after half an hour's delay, get into others. I could not understand why this change was made, more especially as we had but ten miles further to travel until we reached the railroad upon which we were to proceed to Wilmington. At this place I asked for a glass of milk, and they told me they had no such thing. Upon entering our new vehicle, we found another stranger added to our party, to my unspeakable annoyance. Complaint or remonstrance I knew, however, would be of no avail, and I therefore submitted in silence to what I could not help. At a short distance beyond Waynesborough we were desired to alight, in order to walk over a bridge, which was in so rotten a condition as

to render it very probable that it would give way under our weight. This same bridge, whose appearance was indeed most perilous, is built at a considerable height over a broad and rapid stream, called the Neuse, the colour of whose water we had an excellent opportunity of admiring through the numerous holes in the plankage, over which we walked as lightly and rapidly as we could, stopping afterwards to see our coach come at a foot's pace after us. This may be called safe and pleasant travelling. The ten miles which followed were over heavy sandy roads, and it was near sunset when we reached the place where we were to take the railroad. The train, however, had not arrived, and we sat still in the coaches, there being neither town, village, nor even road-side inn at hand, where we might take shelter from the bitter blast which swept through the pine-woods by which we were surrounded; and so we waited patiently, the day gradually drooping, the evening air becoming colder, and the howling wilderness around us more dismal every moment.

In the mean time the coaches were surrounded by a troop of gazing boors, who had come from far and near to see the hot-water carriages come up for only the third time into the midst of their savage solitude. A more forlorn, fierce, poor, and wild set of people, short of absolute savages, I never saw. They wandered round and round us, with a stupid kind of dismayed wonder. The men clothed in the coarsest manner, and the women also, of whom there were not a few, with the grotesque addition of pink and blue silk bonnets, with artificial flowers, and imitation-blonde veils. Here the gentlemen of our party informed us that they observed, for the first time, a custom prevalent in North Carolina, of which I had myself frequently heard beforethe women chewing tobacco, and that, too, in a most disgusting and disagreeable way, if one way can be more disgusting than another. They carry habitually a small stick, like the small implement for cleaning the teeth, usually known in England by the name of a root, -this they thrust away in their glove, or their garter-string, and, whenever occasion offers, plunge it into a snuff-box, and begin chewing it. The practice is so common, that the proffer of the snuff-box, and its passing from hand to hand, is the usual civility of a morning visit among the country-people, and I was not a little amused at hearing the gentlemen who were with us describe the process as they witnessed it in their visit to a miserable farm-house across the fields, whither they went to try to obtain something to eat.

It was now becoming twilight, and the male members of our caravan held council round a pine fire as to what course had better be adopted for sheltering themselves and us, during the night, which we seemed destined to pass in the woods. After some debate, it was recollected that one Colonel -, a man of some standing in that neighbourhood, had a farm about a mile distant immediately upon the line of the railroad, and thither it was determined we should all repair, and ask quarters for the night. Fortunately, an empty baggage-car, or rather a mere platform upon wheels (for it was nothing more) stood at hand upon the iron road, and to this the luggage, and the women and children of the party, were transferred. A number of negroes, who were loitering about, were pressed into the service, and pushed it along, and the gentlemen, walking, brought up the rear. I don't know that I ever in my life felt so completely desolate as during that half-hour's slow progress. We sat cowering among the trunks, my faithful M-- and I, each with a baby in

our arms, sheltering ourselves and our poor little burthens from the bleak northern wind that whistled over us. The last embers of daylight were dying out in dusky red streaks along the horizon, and the dreary waste around us looked like the very shaggy edge of all creation. The men who pushed us along encouraged each other with wild shouts and yells, and every now and then their labour was one of no little danger, as well as difficulty,-for the road crossed one or two deep ravines and morasses at a considerable height, and, as it was not completed, and nothing but the iron rails were laid across piles driven into these places, it became a service of considerable risk to run along these narrow ledges, at the same time urging our car along. No accident happened, however, fortunately, and we presently beheld, with no small satisfaction, a cluster of houses in the fields at some little distance from the road. To the principal one I made my way, followed by the rest of the poor womankind, and, entering the house without further ceremony, ushered them into a large species of wooden room, where blazed a huge pine-wood fire. By this welcome light we descried, sitting in the corner of the vast chimney, an old ruddy-faced man, with silver hair, and a goodhumoured countenance, who, welcoming us with ready hospitality, announced himself as Colonel ——, and invited us to draw near the fire. The worthy Colonel seemed in no way dismayed at this sudden inbreak of distressed women, which was very soon followed by the arrival of the gentlemen, to whom he repeated the same courteous reception he had given us, replying to their rather hesitating demands for something to eat, by ordering to the right and left a tribe of staring negroes, who bustled about preparing supper, under the active superintendence of the hospitable Colonel. His residence (considering his rank) was quite the most primitive imaginable,—a rough brick-and-plank chamber, of considerable dimensions, not even whitewashed, with the great beams and rafters by which it was supported displaying the skeleton of the building, to the complete satisfaction of any one who might be curious in architecture. The windows could close neither at the top, bottom, sides, nor middle, and were, besides, broken so as to admit several delightful currents of air, which might be received as purely accidental. In one corner of this primitive apartment stood an exceedingly clean-looking bed, with coarse furniture, whilst in the opposite one, an old case-clock was ticking away its time and its master's, with cheerful monotony. The rush-bottomed chairs were of as many different shapes and sizes as those in a modern fine lady's drawing-room, and the walls were hung all round with a curious miscellany, consisting principally of physic phials, turkey-feather fans, bunches of dried herbs, and the Colonel's arsenal, in the shape of one or two old guns, &c. According to the worthy man's hearty invitation, I proceeded to make myself and my companions at home, pinning, skewering, and otherwise suspending our cloaks and shawls across the various intentional and unintentional air-gaps, thereby increasing both the comfort and the grotesqueness of the apartment in no small degree. The babies had bowls of milk furnished them, and the elder portion of the caravan was regaled with a taste of the Colonel's home-made wine, pending the supper, to which he continued to entreat our stay. Meantime he entered into conversation with my husband; and my veneration waxed deep, when the old man, unfolding his history, proclaimed himself one of the heroes of the revolution, -a fellow-fighter with