JANUARY 17.
In this country there is scarcely any twilight, and all nature seems to wake at the same moment. About six o’clock the darkness disperses, the sun rises, and instantly every thing is in motion: the negroes are going to the field, the cattle are driving to pasture, the pigs and the poultry are pouring out from their hutches, the old women are preparing food on the lawn for the pickaninnies (the very small children), whom they keep feeding at all hours of the day; and all seem to be going to their employments, none to their work, the men and the women just as quietly and leisurely as the pigs and the poultry. The sight is really quite gay and amusing, and I am generally out of bed in time to enjoy it, especially as the continuance of the cool north breezes renders the weather still delicious, though the pleasure is rather an expensive one. Not a drop of rain has fallen since the 16th of November; the young canes are burning; and the drying quality of these norths is still more detrimental than the want of rain, so that these winds may be said to blow my pockets inside out; and as every draught of air, which I inhale with so much pleasure, is estimated to cost me a guinea, I feel, while breathing it, like Miss Burney’s Citizen at Vauxhall, who kept muttering to himself with every bit of ham that he put into his mouth, “There goes sixpence, and there goes a shilling!”