In the evening, while I was inditing my journal for your edification, Jema made her appearance with her Bran-brown baby, having walked all the way down from Busson Hill to claim a little sugar I had promised her. She had made her child perfectly clean, and it looked quite pretty. When I asked her what I should give her the sugar in, she snatched her filthy handkerchief off her head; but I declined this sugar basin, and gave it to her in some paper. Hannah came on the same errand.
After all, dear E——, we shall not leave Georgia so soon as I expected; we cannot get off for at least another week. You know, our movements are apt to be both tardy and uncertain. I am getting sick in spirit of my stay here; but I think the spring heat is beginning to affect me miserably, and I long for a cooler atmosphere. Here, on St. Simon's, the climate is perfectly healthy, and our neighbours, many of them, never stir from their plantations within reach of the purifying sea influence. But a land that grows magnolias is not fit for me—I was going to say magnolias and rattlesnakes; but I remember K——'s adventure with her friend the rattlesnake of Monument Mountain, and the wild wood-covered hill half-way between Lenox and Stockbridge, which your Berkshire farmers have christened Rattlesnake Mountain. These agreeable serpents seem, like the lovely little humming birds which are found in your northernmost as well as southernmost States, to have an accommodating disposition with regard to climate.
Not only is the vicinity of the sea an element of salubrity here; but the great masses of pine wood growing in every direction indicate lightness of soil and purity of air. Wherever these fragrant, dry, aromatic fir forests extend, there can be no inherent malaria, I should think, in either atmosphere or soil. The beauty and profusion of the weeds and wild flowers in the fields now is something, too, enchanting. I wish I could spread one of these enamelled tracts on the side of one of your snow-covered hills now—for I daresay they are snow-covered yet.
I must give you an account of Aleck's first reading lesson, which took place at the same time that I gave S—— hers this morning. It was the first time he had had leisure to come, and it went off most successfully. He seems to me by no means stupid. I am very sorry he did not ask me to do this before; however, if he can master his alphabet before I go, he may, if chance favour him with the occasional sight of a book, help himself on by degrees. Perhaps he will have the good inspiration to apply to Cooper London for assistance; I am much mistaken if that worthy does not contrive that Heaven shall help Aleck, as it formerly did him—in the matter of reading.
I rode with Jack afterwards, showing him where I wish paths to be cut and brushwood removed. I passed the new house, and again circumvented it meditatingly to discover its available points of possible future comeliness, but remained as convinced as ever that there are absolutely none. Within the last two days, a perfect border of the dark blue Virginicum has burst into blossom on each side of the road, fringing it with purple as far as one can look along it; it is lovely. I must tell you of something which has delighted me greatly. I told Jack yesterday, that if any of the boys liked, when they had done their tasks, to come and clear the paths that I want widened and trimmed, I would pay them a certain small sum per hour for their labour; and behold, three boys have come, having done their tasks early in the afternoon, to apply for work and wages: so much for a suggestion not barely twenty-four hours old, and so much for a prospect of compensation!
In the evenings I attempted to walk out when the air was cool, but had to run precipitately back into the house to escape from the clouds of sand-flies that had settled on my neck and arms. The weather has suddenly become intensely hot; at least, that is what it appears to me. After I had come in I had a visit from Venus and her daughter, a young girl of ten years old, for whom she begged a larger allowance of food as, she said, what she received for her was totally inadequate to the girl's proper nourishment. I was amazed, upon enquiry, to find that three quarts of grits a week—that is not a pint a day—was considered a sufficient supply for children of her age. The mother said her child was half-famished on it, and it seemed to me terribly little.
My little workmen have brought me in from the woods three darling little rabbits which they have contrived to catch. They seemed to me slightly different from our English bunnies; and Captain F——, who called to-day, gave me a long account of how they differed from the same animal in the northern States. I did not like to mortify my small workmen by refusing their present; but the poor little things must be left to run wild again, for we have no conveniences for pets here, besides we are just weighing anchor ourselves. I hope these poor little fluffy things will not meet any rattlesnakes on their way back to the woods.
I had a visit for flannel from one of our Dianas to-day,—who had done her task in the middle of the day, yet came to receive her flannel,—the most horribly dirty human creature I ever beheld, unless indeed her child, whom she brought with her, may have been half a degree dirtier.
The other day, Psyche (you remember the pretty under nurse, the poor thing whose story I wrote you from the rice plantation) asked me if her mother and brothers might be allowed to come and see her when we are gone away. I asked her some questions about them, and she told me that one of her brothers, who belonged to Mr. K——, was hired by that gentleman to a Mr. G—— of Darien, and that, upon the latter desiring to purchase him, Mr. K—— had sold the man without apprising him or any one member of his family that he had done so—a humane proceeding that makes one's blood boil when one hears of it. He had owned the man ever since he was a boy. Psyche urged me very much to obtain an order permitting her to see her mother and brothers. I will try and obtain it for her, but there seems generally a great objection to the visits of slaves from neighbouring plantations, and, I have no doubt, not without sufficient reason. The more I see of this frightful and perilous social system, the more I feel that those who live in the midst of it must make their whole existence one constant precaution against danger of some sort or other.
I have given Aleck a second reading lesson with S——, who takes an extreme interest in his newly acquired alphabetical lore. He is a very quick and attentive scholar, and I should think a very short time would suffice to teach him to read; but, alas! I have not even that short time. When I had done with my class, I rode off with Jack, who has become quite an expert horseman, and rejoices in being lifted out of the immediate region of snakes by the length of his horse's legs. I cantered through the new wood paths, and took a good sloping gallop through the pine land to St. Annie's. The fire is actually still burning in the woods. I came home quite tired with the heat, though my ride was not a long one.