LETTER XIII.

Mobile, on the Gulf of Mexico, 3d April, 1820.

It was with much regret that I left several kind and interesting friends whom I had met with at Charleston. Our last day there was Sunday; and the diminution of carriages at the church door evinced that the fashionable society was dispersing, and that many families had already retired to their plantations after the races. The places of worship appeared well filled; but many of the streets were noisy, and exhibited as little of a Sabbath scene as Hyde Park or Piccadilly. I was told also that gambling was going on to a great extent, in a detached building belonging to the hotel where I was staying; but as I have sometimes heard the same rumour when staying at the York House in Bath, or an hotel in the west of London, let us hope (if we can) that it was in both cases, a libellous report. I was pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this day in their best attire, and was astonished in observing the efforts they make to preserve as a body that self-respect which they know is not felt for them by their proprietors. They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing each other, make the most formal and particular inquiries after each other's families. They frequently adopt the names of the families in which they live. Thus, the principal male servant in Col. F.'s family, is Col. F.; the principal female servant, Mrs. F.; while half a dozen Miss F.'s will give their names to as many chamber

maids, if they have them.

In the evening I visited the prison, as I have done in most towns where I had the opportunity; but the turnkey was intoxicated, and I could obtain little information as to the general plan of management. The prisoners, I understood from an assistant, have a liberal allowance of meat, bread, and broth daily; but no work, and no instruction except from occasional visits of the clergy, of whom the Black ministers are the most assiduous. I saw one earnestly engaged in prayer with the Black prisoners, one of whom was just committed for the murder of his master. The Black are separated from the White prisoners, the male from the female, the greater from the lesser criminals. I saw and conversed with the murderer of Dr. Ramsay, the historian. I was told that the crime occurred under the following circumstances. The man having shot a lawyer whom he had retained on some business, Dr. Ramsay had given evidence that he was insane; which the maniac learning, watched an opportunity, and shot him also. He has been confined in prison ever since, and is a pitiable object. If you are as well acquainted with the character of Mrs. Ramsay as, from its uncommon excellence, I hope you are, you will be interested by this allusion to her husband. If you have never met with her "Memoirs," let me entreat you to forego no longer the gratification and improvement you can hardly fail to derive from them. They exhibit a character which will not shrink from a comparison with that of the most eminent female Christians of any age or

country. Her father, Colonel Laurens, was President of the Congress during the revolutionary war; and it is delightful to read the liberal and pacific sentiments which his letters to his daughter breathe at the very moment when his plantations were overrun by the British soldiery, and the lives of himself and his family were in imminent danger. Surely it would tend greatly to increase our detestation of war and all its outrages, if we allowed our imagination to dwell more on the friendly sentiments which the liberal and Christian part of hostile nations often feel towards each other, at the very moment when public animosity and fury rage the loudest. In 1776, Colonel Laurens writes from Charleston, to his daughter, then in England—

"Act your part well, my dear: love God, and all things will work together for your good. It is melancholy to see the abuse of many good houses in this town, which are now made barracks for the country militia, who strip the paper-hangings, chop wood upon parlour floors, and do a thousand improper acts. The men of war at Georgia have swept Mr. Arthur Middleton's plantation, upon Savannah river, of about sixty-five Negroes.— Wright's savannah is within three or four miles of it; probably some solitary escaping man may come within two or three days to inform me of like mischiefs done there, and at Altamaha, by those Sabeans and Chaldeans. Be it so, I will say, Blessed be the name of the Lord. We must expect a visit from the British very soon. In these circumstances every man here holds his

life by the most precarious tenure, and our friends abroad should prepare themselves for learning that we are numbered with the dead. You will in silence submit the future progress and final determination of events to the wise order of that superintending Being who holds the scales of justice in his hand. Your part will be to join with the sons and daughters of piety, and pray incessantly for peace: peace to all the world, especially the country in which you reside, (England,) and that to which you more particularly belong; and you will lament that it is your father's unhappy lot to be engaged in war, in civil war, God's severest scourge upon mankind."

These sentiments are worthy a Christian father when addressing his Christian child; and cold and base must be that heart which could feel hostile to an enemy who could breathe them at such a moment of suffering and irritation.

We set out from Charleston on the 28th February, and arrived at Savannah on the afternoon of the 29th, travelling all night, and completing in the mail-stage 110 miles in twenty-seven hours. On mounting our sorry vehicle, we found our equipage reduced to a peace establishment of two horses, and our stages were occasionally thirty miles long. We saw nothing particularly interesting in our route except the cotton plantations, where the Negroes were hard at work under a broiling sun and a driver's lash. Experience had taught us not to trust to this deceitful climate; and we found all our sea coats insufficient to protect us against the excessive cold of the night. In

passing through the swamps, we were enveloped in a thick mist, which, in summer, must be highly dangerous. Indeed our driver told us that on two stages on this road last autumn, they lost five drivers, who fell a sacrifice to fever. In the middle of the night I heard the howling of wolves, and when walking before the stage, as we approached Savannah, I started an alligator about six yards from me, which plunged off the road into some water. It was then as intensely hot as it had been cold a few nights before.

;

Savannah is situated on a river of the same name, and is laid out in long and very broad streets, which meet at right angles, and are lined with trees called "The Pride of India." These trees are great favourites with the inhabitants : but they are too strongly associated in my mind with yellow fever, to be agreeable. The streets are unpaved and except in the middle path, which is a heavy disagreeable sand, they are covered with grass. The horses, as in most of the towns in the south, are unshod.

The late fire has given the town a most desolate appearance, yet the inhabitants are most unwittingly running up wooden houses again with great rapidity. Fires are continually occurring in this country. A large one happened while I was at Savannah; another at Charleston; and we had a serious alarm at Washington. Brick houses, however, are daily becoming more common. In Charleston a person is stationed every night on the steeple of one of the churches, to watch and give the alarm in case of fire, as the inhabitants