Ixxxviii LIFE OF WILSON. 



disagreeable. I proceeded on my journey, passing through so- 

 litary pine woods, perpetually interrupted by swamps, that co- 

 vered the road with water two and three feet deep, frequently 

 half a mile at a time, looking like a long river or pond. These 

 in the afternoon were surmountable; but the weather being ex- 

 ceedingly severe, they were covered every morning with a 

 sheet of ice, from half an inch to an inch thick, that cut my 

 horse's legs and breast. After passing a bridge, I had many 

 times to wade, and twice to swim my. horse, to get to the shore. 

 I attempted to cross the Roanoke at three different ferries, thir- 

 ty-five miles apart, and at last succeeded at a place about fifteen 

 miles below Halifax. A violent snow storm made the roads still 

 more execrable. 



" The productions of these parts of North Carolina are hogs, 

 turpentine, tar, and apple brandy. A tumbler of toddy is usual- 

 ly the morning's beverage of the inhabitants, as soon as they 

 get out of bed. So universal is the practice, that the first thing 

 you find them engaged in, after rising, is preparing the brandy 

 toddy. You can scarcely meet a man whose lips are not parch- 

 ed and chopped or blistered with drinking this poison. Those 

 who do not drink it, they say, are sure of the ague. I, how- 

 ever, escaped. The pine woods have a singular appearance, 

 every tree being stripped, on one or more sides, of the bark, for 

 six or seven feet up. The turpentine covers these parts in thick 

 masses. I saw the people, in different parts of the woods, 

 mounted on benches, chopping down the sides of the trees; 

 leaving a trough or box in the tree for the turpentine to run 

 into. Of hogs they have immense multitudes; one person will 

 sometimes own five hundred. The leaders have bells round 

 their necks; and every drove knows its particular call, whether 

 it be a conch-shell, or the bawling of a negro, though half a 

 mile off. Their owners will sometimes drive them for four or 

 five days to a market, without once feeding them. 



61 The taverns are the most desolate and beggarly imaginable: 

 bare, bleak, and dirty walls; one or two old broken chairs, 

 and a bench, form all the furniture. The white females seldom 



