164 HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SKETCH OF 



that portion of time which is occupied in going to 

 and returning from the plantation. Now, the sum- 

 mer nights are very short, and though one may 

 without inconvenience dispense with a half-hour's 

 sleep on any given occasion, yet this trifling amount 

 tells in the aggregate, and the climate has full op- 

 portunity to work upon the exhausted body. As a 

 general rule, too, the overseers are generally more 

 healthy, whether living on plantations or in pine 

 lands, than men of the same class living on their 

 own pine-land farms. A more generous diet en- 

 ables them to resist more effectually the effects of 

 the climate ; and we believe that any planter who 

 keeps a good table and enjoys it in moderation, who 

 will not drink too much wine or other stimulating 

 liquors, and who will not suffer his spirits to be de- 

 pressed by the ominous croakings of his friends, 

 may pass the summer on his plantation, if not in 

 perfect health, at least with no visitation more fear- 

 ful than the intermittent fever of the climate. The 

 late Dr. Charles Rutledge spent the summer of 1800 

 on Accabee plantation, and his family enjoyed per- 

 fect health. In 1839, when the yellow fever raged 

 in Charleston, and the citadel was full of pestilence, 

 Major Parker removed his family, in midsummer, 

 to the Martello Towers, and they all enjoyed per- 

 fect health there. Other cases may without much 

 trouble be enumerated, all going to prove, not that 

 the climate has changed, as our people so rashly 



