NOTES ON AMERICA. 149 



no sugar-tongs ; it was the fashion to use fingers in place thereof: the 

 knives and forks were of common cast iron. The price of cotton, and 

 the exploits of General Jackson, formed the principal topics of conver- 

 sation : my host assured me that John Quincy Adams was not priming 

 to Henry Clay, that Rufus King talked a great deal about slavery, but 

 knew nothing of the nature of " niggers," that he himself was fond of 

 gentlemen from the Old country, but hated those "wooden nutmeg 

 Yankee pedlars," and he finally offered to bet me a beaver hat, that 

 Mr. Hugh Legaree, of Charleston, was as eloquent as Demosthenes, 

 laying a drawling emphasis on the last syllable. I afterwards found that 

 he imagined Demosthenes to be a member of Parliament. 



The good lady was very silent while this interesting conversation was 

 carried on, and, indeed, the only word which she pronounced distinctly 

 during the whole evening, was a loud amen to a very long grace, which 

 her husband chaunted forth after supper. To the performance of this 

 ceremonial, however, he did not seem to have been actuated so much by 

 a feeling of religious gratitude for an enormous meal, as by the notion, 

 that it was the fashion to say the grace among the great bugs, by which 

 agreeable appellation he designated the higher class of gentry in his 

 neighbourhood. I was ushered into my sleeping apartment soon after 

 supper. Here again, matters were strangely ill assorted. The dimen- 

 sions of this chamber were nearly the same as those of the supper-room, 

 about twelve feet by eight. A large and very handsome carved maho- 

 gany bedstead without curtains, but tolerably well furnished with linen, 

 &c. was literally, the only piece of furniture in the room. The next 

 morning, the whole family assembled under a shed upon the road-side to 

 perform their ablutions. Here I found a large tub of water with a 

 gourd for a ladle, a coarse towel, and a tin washing basin, which we all 

 made use of in turn. 



The breakfast was a repetition of the supper of the preceding night, 

 with the addition of some whiskey and peach brandy, of which I 

 declined to partake, although the lady set me the example by swallowing 

 a large cup full. Gibbon has somewhere remarked, that the modern 

 invention of glass is sufficient to counterbalance all the luxuries of the 

 Roman emperors. My worthy host, whose domestic arrangements I 

 have here rather freely exposed, had never, I presume, studied the histo- 

 rian of the " Decline and Fall;" as I did not observe a single bit of 

 glass of any description throughout his premises. However, he gave me 

 a hearty welcome, and a pressing invitation to repeat my visit, and I re- 

 member him as the most favourable specimen of his class that I have 

 ever had the good fortune to encounter. 



I will here mention one or two facts, in justification of the rather harsh 

 opinion I have above expressed of the state of moral feeling in the interior 

 of the Southern States. 



In the year 1826, in Greenville county, South Carolina, two slaves 

 were condemned to the stake and actually burned, for the murder of 

 their master. About the same time also, a negro was burned in Georgia 

 what his offence was I do not at present recollect. That such enor- 

 mities should be perpetrated in the 19th century, by a people professing 

 the humane doctrines of Christianity, is almost incredible ; but the facts 

 are indisputable. 



I was an accidental witness to the following outrage, which was 

 committed at a village in Georgia. Having occasion to purchase some 



