1 2 INDIFFERENCE TO COLD. [CHAP. XX 



rather enhance the value of his slaves than otherwise. 

 Unfortunately, the whites, in return, often learn 

 from the negroes to speak broken English, and, in 

 spite of losing much time in unlearning ungramma- 

 tical phrases, well-educated people retain some of 

 them all their lives. 



As I stopped every evening at the point where 

 my geological work for the day happened to end, 

 I had sometimes to put up with rough quarters 

 in the pine-barrens. It was cold, and none of 

 my hosts grudged a good fire, for large logs of 

 blazing pine-wood were freely heaped up on the 

 hearth, but the windows and doors were kept wide 

 open. One morning, I was at breakfast with a 

 large family, at sunrise, when the frost was so hard, 

 that every pool of water in the road was encrusted 

 with ice. In the course of the winter, some ponds, 

 they said, had borne the weight of a man and horse, 

 and there had been a coroner s inquest on the body 

 of a man, lately found dead on the road, where the 

 question had been raised whether he had been mur 

 dered or frozen to death. They had placed me in a 

 thorough draught, and, unable to bear the cold any 

 longer, I asked leave to close the window. My 

 hostess observed, that &quot; I might do so, if I preferred 

 sitting in the dark.&quot; On looking up, I discovered 

 that there was no glass in the windows, and that 

 they were furnished with large shutters only. For 

 my own part, I would willingly have been content 

 with the light which the pine-wood gave us, but 

 seeing the women and girls, with bare necks and 

 light clothing, perfectly indifferent to the cold, I 



