50 THE INLAND PASSAGE. 



tu.de home to us, by pressing on us choice morsels, 

 which he offered in a delicate and forgiving way 

 upon his own fork, and which we were fain to accept 

 and swallow in the same fashion under pain of again 

 offending him. 



Nevertheless the duck was good, the biscuits were 

 good, the pancakes were excellent, the hash was 

 superb, every article of diet all day long, from the 

 gorgeous breakfast to the gorging at supper, when 

 appetite had been more than sated, were unsurpass- 

 able and we had a Christmas long to be remembered. 



We remained in Charleston for two weeks. If the 

 reader asks what we were doing all that time, let 

 him go to the old time Queen City of the South, now 

 apparently being displaced by her enterprising rival, 

 Savannah ; let him roam about her quaint streets and 

 mingle with her hospitable people, and he will find 

 out. There is much of physical and human interest 

 in and around Charleston, from the live oaks on her 

 Battery or White Point Park, and the moss covered 

 trees of her famous Magnolia cemetery, to the oys- 

 ters growing in thousands around her sea-wall, and 

 which would furnish unlimited sustenance to her 

 citizens were they not oyster surfeited. We stood 

 and gawked at the tropical plants in full foliage, and 

 at the orange trees in full bearing, in the house door 

 gardens till the residents, unacquainted though they 

 were personally with us, took pity and gave us the 

 names of the plants and told us that the oranges 

 were sour, none of the sweet varieties being able to 

 grow so far north.- We loafed around the market 



