NORTH CAROLINA 117 



by a fine sand-cement, in some places effervescing 

 under acids and in others striking fire on steel. Mill- 

 stones such as these last 20 years and more without 

 whetting, which would besides be superfluous, on ac- 

 count of the great unevenness due to the holes. They 

 are light, and therefore well suited for hand-mills, the 

 construction of which is very simple, as might be ex- 

 pected in an American apparatus. The mill consists 

 of a hollowed block, about 3 foot high and 2 in diam- 

 eter, in which the nether stone lies fixed, the upper, 

 even with the edge of the block, moving on an iron 

 spindle-tree fixed in the stone beneath, and adjustable 

 high or low by a wedge, according as the grinding is 

 to be coarse or fine. A pole 4-5 ft. long, shod with 

 iron at the lower end, is fixed at the top in a piece of 

 timber made fast above the mill ; the lower end being 

 gripped to the upper stone by a hole in the edge, a 

 negro briskly turns it about, and grinds several bushels 

 of corn a day. A pair of these stones costs 5-6 Span- 

 ish dollars. Horse-mills are set up here and there 

 with larger stones, but the construction is almost as 

 simple. 



Full four days we stayed at Edenton waiting to be 

 set over Albemarle Sound : the trouble was not wind 

 and weather, but the scurvy negligence of the man 

 who by permission of a high authority keeps the 

 ferry. He had allowed the negroes to go across the 

 Sound with the boat for a holiday, not at all solicitous 

 about travellers who might arrive in the mean time. 

 No people can be so greedy after holidays as the 

 whites and blacks here, and none with less reason, for 

 at no time do they work so as to need a long rest. It is 

 difficult to say which are the best creatures, the whites 



