Adjoining These Habitations, We Found Line Peach Orchards, Teeming With Fruit Of The Richest Description, Which Lay In Bushels On The Ground, And With Which We Regaled Ourselves.

Enclosed maize fields overgrown with brambles, and cotton fields with the gins and apparatus for packing the produce in bales for the market, presented to the eye the very picture of desolation.

Owing to cross roads we were at one time completely at fault, and there being no house in sight, I volunteered to ride off to the right and endeavour to obtain the information we were in need of. After riding about half-a-mile, I heard voices through a road-side coppice, which I took to be those of field-hands at work; going farther on I dismounted, and climbing the zigzag rail fence approached a negro at work in the field. I inquired if he could put me on the road to Tallahassee; he appeared much frightened at the intrusion, but stated he did not know, but his mas'r did, at the same time pointing to the plantation-house, situate the greater part of a mile distant; being averse to going there, for fear of impudent interrogation, I offered him money to go with me to the point where I had left my companions, and show us the way to the next house; he did not even know what it was I offered him, and in apparent amazement inquired what that was for; I explained, buy tobacco, buy whiskey; he appeared totally ignorant of its use, and I have no doubt he had never had money in his possession, or learned its use. Still, he refused to leave the field, a wise precaution, as I afterwards found, both for himself and me.

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