CHAP. XX.] PINE-BARRENS. 13 



merely asked permission to put on my great coat and 

 hat. These Georgians seemed to me, after their 

 long summer, to be as insensible to the frost as 

 some Englishmen the first winter after their return 

 from India, who come back charged, as it were, with 

 a superabundant store of caloric, and take time, like 

 a bar of iron out of a furnace, to part with their heat. 

 A farmer near Parramore s Hill, thinking I had 

 come to settle there, offered to sell me some land at 

 the rate of two dollars an acre. It was well timbered, 

 and I found that the wood growing on this sandy 

 soil is often worth more than the ground w T hich it 

 covers. Another resident in the same district, told 

 me he had bought his farm at two and a half dollars 

 (or about half-a-guinea) an acre, and thought it dear, 

 and would have gone off to Texas, if he were not 

 expecting to reap a rich harvest from a thriving 

 plantation of peach trees and nectarines, just coming 

 into full bearing. A market for such fruit had re 

 cently been opened by the new railway, from Macon 

 to Savannah. He complained of want of elbow-room, 

 although I found that his nearest neighbour was six 

 or seven miles distant ; but, he observed, that having 

 a large family of children, he wished to lay out his 

 capital in the purchase of a wider extent of land in 

 Texas, and so be the better able to provide for 

 them. 



