66 SALE OF SLAVES. [CHAP. XXIV. 



pleasure in meeting his friends at a given point on a 

 given day, and there was sure to be a muster of 

 several hundred settlers, armed with rifles, and pre 

 pared for a desperate fight with 5000 or 7000 

 Indians. 



At Macon I was fortunate enough to meet with Mr. 

 William Pickett, a friend of Mr. Blount s, who, after 

 returning from the wars in Texas, had most actively 

 aided Mr. Koch in digging up the skeleton of the 

 fossil whale, or zeuglodon, near Clarkesville. As I 

 was anxious to know the true position of that re 

 markable fossil, and to ascertain how much of it had 

 been obtained in a single locality, I gladly accepted 

 Mr. Pickett s offer, to act as guide in this excursion. 

 On repairing to the stable for the horse destined to 

 draw our vehicle, we were met with a singular piece 

 of intelligence. The stable-boy who had groomed it 

 in the morning was &quot; up for sale.&quot; Without his 

 assistance we could not start, for this boy had the 

 key of the harness-room. So I determined to go to 

 the auction, where I found that a sale of land and 

 negroes was going on, in consequence of the State 

 having foreclosed one of those mortgages, before 

 alluded to, on which public money borrowed from Eu 

 ropean capitalists had been lent by the State, for agri 

 cultural improvements. I first saw an old man sold for 

 150 dollars ; then a boy, seventeen years old, knocked 

 down for 535 dollars, on which a bystander remarked 

 to me, &quot; They are selling well to-day.&quot; Next came 

 on the young man in whose immediate release I was 

 more especially interested. He stepped forward, hat 

 in hand, with an easy natural air, seeming to be very 



