LIFE OF WILSON. Ixv 



be insufficient to tempt me that way, for I doubt whether my funds would be 

 sufficient to carry me through. 



" The innkeepers in the southern states are like the vultures that hover 

 about their cities; and treat their guests as the others do their carrion : are as 

 glad to see them, and pick them as bare. The last letter I wrote you was on 

 my arrival in Charleston. I found greater difficulties to surmount there than 

 I had thought of. I solicited several people for a list of names, but that abject 

 and disgraceful listlessness and want of energy, which have unnerved the 

 whites of all descriptions in these states, put me off from time to time, till at 

 last I was obliged to walk the streets, and pick out those houses which, from 

 their appearance, indicated wealth and taste in the occupants, and introducf* 

 myself. Neither M., Dr. R., nor any other that I applied to, gave me the 

 least assistance, though they promised, and knew I was a stranger. I was 

 going on in this way, when the keeper of the library, a Scotsman, a good man, 

 whose name had been mentioned to me, made me out a list from the directory; 

 and among these I spent ten days. The extreme servility, and superabund- 

 ance of negroes, have ruined the energy and activity of the white population. 

 M. appears to be fast sinking into the same insipidity of character, with a 

 pretty good sprinkling of rapacity. In Charleston, however, I met with some 

 excellent exceptions, among the first ranks of society; and the work excited 

 universal admiration. Dr. D. introduced it very handsomely into the Courier. 

 On hearing of General Wilkinson's arrival, I waited on him. He received 

 me with kindness — said he valued the book highly — and paid me the twelve 

 dollars ; on which I took occasion to prognosticate my final success on receiving 

 its first fruits from him. 



" I will not tire you by a recital of the difficulties which Tmet with between 

 Charleston and Savannah, by bad roads,' and the extraordinary flood of the 

 river Savannah, where I had nearly lost my horse, he having, by his restiveness, 

 thrown himself overboard ; and, had I not, at great personal risk, rescued him, 

 he might have floated down to Savannah before me. 



" I arrived here on Tuesday last, and advertised in the Republican, the 

 editors of which interested themselves considerably for me, speaking of my 

 book in their Thursday's paper with much approbation. The expense of adver- 

 tising in the southern states is great; but I found it really necessary. I have 

 now seen every person in this place and neighborhood, of use to be seen. Here 

 I close the list of my subscriptions, obtained at a price worth more than five 

 times their amount. But, in spite of a host of difficulties, I have gained my 

 point; and should the work be continued in the style it has been begun, I have 

 no doubt but we may increase the copies to four hundred. I have endeavored 

 to find persons of respectability in each town, who will receive and deliver the 

 volumes, without recompense, any further than allowing them to make the first 

 selection. By this means the rapacity of some booksellers will be avoided. 



" The weather has been extremely warm these ten days, the thermometer 

 stood in the shade on Friday and Saturday last, at 78° and 79°. I have seen 

 no frost since the 5th of February. The few gardens here are as green and 

 luxuriant as ours are in summer — full of flowering shrubbery, and surrounded 

 with groves of orange trees, fifteen and twenty feet high, loaded with fruit 



Vol. I.— E • 



